Inter Parfums Earnings Preview

Investors hope Inter Parfums (Nasdaq: IPAR) will top analyst estimates once again after beating predictions by $0.07 in the previous quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday, March 12. Inter Parfums and its subsidiaries are in the fragrance business and manufacture and distribute an array of fragrances and fragrance-related products.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts strongly back Inter Parfums, with three of five rating it a buy and the remainder rating it a hold. Analysts don't like Inter Parfums as much as competitor Revlon overall. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of Inter Parfums for the past three months.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $177.8 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 58.2% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.15 per share. Estimates range from $0.13 to $0.17.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly supporting the stock, with 100% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large is in line with the All-Stars, with 96.5% awarding it a rating of "outperform." Even with a robust four out of five stars, Inter Parfums' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Inter Parfums' profit has risen year over year by an average of 31.5% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters. The company boosted its gross margin by 4.3 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 42.1% while cost of sales rose 27.3% to $63.1 million from a year earlier.

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. Inter Parfums' gross margins have increased year over year for the last four quarters. Gross margins reflect the total sales revenue retained after costs. Here is how Inter Parfums has been doing for the last four quarters:

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.