Brunswick (NYSE: BC) will try to beat its earnings estimates for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Jan. 26. Brunswick is a global manufacturer and marketer of recreation products including boats, marine engines, fitness equipment, and bowling and billiards equipment.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Brunswick as a buy. But with 66.7% of analysts rating it a buy, Brunswick is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 72% buys. Analysts like Brunswick better than competitor Marine Products overall. Zero out of one analysts rate Marine Products a buy compared to six of nine for Brunswick. While analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $776.9 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 6.6% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.40 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.43 to a loss of $0.35.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see Brunswick as a good bet, with 56.2% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The community is split on the stock with 54.5% Fools awarding it an "outperform" rating and 45.5% an "underperform" rating. Fools are gung-ho about Brunswick and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 145 posts in the past 30 days. Brunswick's bearish CAPS rating of one out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
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

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

23.1%

25.1%

24.0%

15.9%

Operating Margin

4.1%

9.8%

6.8%

(10.2%)

Net Margin

0.5%

6.3%

2.8%

(14.3%)

For all our Brunswick-specific analysis, including earnings and beyond, add Brunswick to My Watchlist.

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.