Investors are on the edge of their collective seats, hoping that Cooper (NYSE: COO) will top analyst expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, March 8. Cooper develops, manufactures, and markets health-care products, primarily medical devices, through its two business units: CooperVision and CooperSurgical.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Cooper, with five out of eight rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts like Cooper better than competitor Teleflex overall. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Cooper for the past three months.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $317.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 8.2% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.03 per share. Estimates range from $0.97 to $1.09.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are split on Cooper, with 54.8% rating it an outperform and 45.2% giving it an underperform rating. Cooper's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Cooper's profit has risen year over year by an average of more than threefold over the past five quarters. The company upped its gross margin by 2.1 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 15.2% while cost of sales rose 9.1% to $137.3 million from a year earlier.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins serve as an illustration of how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. In the last two quarters, Cooper has experienced a dip in operating margins year over year. Operating margins reflect the total sales revenue that the company retains after costs. Here are Cooper's reported margins for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q4

Q3

Q2

Q1

Gross Margin

62.0%

57.7%

62.0%

60.2%

Operating Margin

18.5%

13.1%

18.5%

18.7%

Net Margin

15.7%

10.9%

10.9%

15.4%

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

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.