Watch Xilinx's (Nasdaq: XLNX) earnings report to see if it can beat analyst expectations for the third consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Wednesday. Xilinx designs, develops, and markets programmable platforms and predefined system functions that are delivered as intellectual property cores.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Xilinx with 12 of 21 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Xilinx as much as competitor Atmel overall. Thirteen out of 14 analysts rate Atmel a buy compared with nine of 21 for Xilinx.
  • Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $562.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 9.2% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.44 per share. Estimates range from $0.41 to $0.53.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 94% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 89.3% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are gung-ho about Xilinx and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 129 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Xilinx, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Xilinx's profit has risen year over year by an average of 53.6% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three 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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

63.7%

65.3%

65.7%

65.6%

Operating Margin

30.6%

30.8%

32.4%

35.9%

Net Margin

25.1%

27.2%

26.9%

27.6%

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