Investors hope Church & Dwight (NYSE: CHD) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.01 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. Church & Dwight develops, manufactures, and markets a broad range of household, personal care, and specialty products. The company focuses its marketing efforts mainly on its eight power brands.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Church & Dwight. Analysts like Church & Dwight better than competitor Clorox Company overall. Zero out of 15 analysts rate Clorox Co. a buy compared to six of 16 for Church & Dwight. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $694.3 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.7% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.51 per share. Estimates range from $0.49 to $0.52.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 97.8% awarding it an outperform rating. The greater community agrees with the All-Stars, as 95.6% give it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced Church & Dwight and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 137 posts in the past 30 days. Even with a robust four out of five stars, Church & Dwight's CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Church & Dwight's profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 4.8% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Margins are a representation of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Church & Dwight's net margins have increased year-over-year for the last three quarters. Net margins reflect what percentage of revenue becomes profit. Here is how Church & Dwight has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

44.2%

44.5%

44.9%

44.5%

Operating Margin

18.0%

17.5%

20.4%

12.2%

Net Margin

11.4%

12.2%

13.0%

7.2%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.