Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of La-Z-Boy's (NYSE: LZB) earnings announcement as the company has wavered between beating and falling short of analyst predictions during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday, Nov. 21. La-Z-Boy manufactures, markets, imports, distributes, and retails upholstery products and casegoods (wood) furniture products.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back La-Z-Boy, with four out of five rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like La-Z-Boy as much as competitor Natuzzi overall. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of La-Z-Boy for the past three months.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $310 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.8% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.14 per share. Estimates range from $0.12 to $0.17.

What our community says:
Most CAPS All-Stars are skeptical of La-Z-Boy prospects, with 65.5% assigning it an underperform rating. The community is of two minds on the stock, with 47% Fools giving it an outperform rating and 53% an underperform rating. Fools are bearish on La-Z-Boy and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 153 posts in the past 30 days. La-Z-Boy's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

28.9%

31.9%

30.3%

29%

Operating Margin

1.2%

3.6%

3.4%

1.8%

Net Margin

16.3%

3%

3.4%

1.3%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.