Interactive Brokers Group (Nasdaq: IBKR) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Oct. 20. Interactive Brokers Group is an automated global electronic market maker and broker specializing in routing orders and executing and processing trades in securities, futures and foreign exchange instruments on more than 80 electronic exchanges.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on Interactive Brokers Group as three analysts rate it as a buy and only one analyst rates it as a sell. Analysts like Interactive Brokers Group better than competitor MF Global overall. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $302 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 1% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.25 per share. Estimates range from $0.18 to $0.34.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 98.1% awarding it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 96.4% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are gung-ho about Interactive Brokers Group and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 183 posts in the past 30 days. Interactive Brokers Group has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
The company's revenue has now risen for two straight quarters.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. The following table shows net margins over the past four quarters. 

Quarter Q2 Q1 Q4 Q3
Net Margin 3.0% 4.2% (13.8%) 3.5%
One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Interactive Brokers Group movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your Watchlist.