ValueClick (Nasdaq: VCLK) will try to beat its earnings estimates for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings Tuesday. ValueClick offers products and services that enable marketers to advertise and sell through online marketing channels such as display advertising, lead generation marketing, email marketing, and search marketing.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back ValueClick, with nine of 16 rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Wall Street has warmed to the stock over the past three months, with analysts increasing their endorsement from hold to moderate buy.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $175.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 36.4% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.29 per share. Estimates range from $0.27 to $0.30.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock, with 92.6% granting it an "outperform" rating. Most of the community backs the All-Stars, with 93.8% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are bullish on ValueClick and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 237 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of ValueClick, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
ValueClick's profit has risen year-over-year by an average of 15.3% over the past five quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 6.9 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 27.4% while cost of sales rose 60.5% to $45.7 million from a year earlier.

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. ValueClick's gross margins, which reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs, have been dropping year-over-year for the last four quarters. Here is how ValueClick has been doing for the last four quarters: 

Quarter Q3 Q2 Q1 Q4
Gross Margin 66.4% 67.9% 71.8% 72.5%
Operating Margin 20.2% 21.2% 22.8% 25.4%
Net Margin 27.9% 13.6% 14.5% 16.4%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.