Progress Software Earnings Preview

Progress Software (Nasdaq: PRGS) met its estimates last quarter, but investors hope that it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Wednesday, March 28. Progress Software is a supplier of application infrastructure software and services for the development, deployment, integration, and management of business applications.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Half of analysts think investors should stand pat on Progress Software while the remaining half rate the stock as a buy. Analysts don't like Progress Software as much as competitor Pervasive Software overall. Two out of two analysts rate Pervasive Software a buy compared to two out of four for Progress Software. That rating hasn't budged in three months as analysts have remained unchanged in their opinion of the stock.
• Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $120.5 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 10.3% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.20 per share. Estimates range from $0.20 to $0.21.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly supporting the stock, with 83.3% awarding it an outperform rating. The community at large concurs with the All-Stars, with 81.6% granting it a rating of outperform. Progress Software's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Progress Software's income has fallen year over year by an average of more than sixfold over the past five quarters. Revenue has fallen in the past two quarters.

Now, a look at how efficient management has been at running the business. Margins illustrate how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. Progress Software has seen slipping net margins year over year for the last three quarters. Net margins reflect what percentage of each dollar earned by the company becomes profit. Here are Progress Software's reported margins for the last four quarters:

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Progress Software's movements, and for more analysis on the company, make sure you add it to your Watchlist.

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.