Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of United Therapeutics' (Nasdaq: UTHR) 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 Tuesday, Feb. 14. United Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening cardiovascular or infectious diseases and cancer.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back United Therapeutics as a buy. But with 71.4% of analysts rating it a buy, United Therapeutics is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 72.1% buys. Analysts don't like United Therapeutics as much as competitor Teva Pharmaceutical overall. Twenty-four out of 32 analysts rate Teva Pharmaceutical a buy compared to 10 out of 14 for United Therapeutics. Analysts still rate the stock a moderate buy, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $205.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 23.2% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.87 per share. Estimates range from $0.44 to $1.28.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock, with 93.3% giving it an outperform rating. The greater community backs the All-Stars, as 91.8% give it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced United Therapeutics, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 62 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of United Therapeutics, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
United Therapeutics' income has fallen year over year by an average of 47.9% over the past five quarters.

Now let's get some insight into how efficient management is at running the business. Margins are a representation of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. The company's net margins, which reflect what percentage of revenue becomes profit, moved upward year over year in the last two quarters. See how United Therapeutics has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

88.8%

88.5%

87%

87.9%

Operating Margin

51%

62.3%

22.3%

5.4%

Net Margin

41.8%

40.2%

9.9%

5.7%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.