RF Micro Devices (Nasdaq: RFMD) came in right in line with the Street's expectations last quarter, but investors are hoping that it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday, April 24. RF Micro Devices designs and manufactures high-performance radio frequency components and compound semiconductors technologies.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on RF Micro Devices as seven analysts rate it as a buy and only two analysts rate it as a sell. Analysts like RF Micro Devices better than competitor TriQuint Semiconductor overall. Analysts are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $185.2 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 13.2% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is a loss of $0.03 per share. Estimates range from a loss of $0.04 to a loss of $0.01.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are strongly backing the stock, with 94.5% awarding it an outperform rating. The greater community backs the All-Stars, as 94.1% give it a rating of outperform. Even with a robust four out of five stars, RF Micro Devices' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Revenue has fallen for the past three quarters. The company's gross margin shrank by 8.8 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue fell 19.1% while cost of sales fell 7.9% to $161.9 million from a year earlier.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Margins illustrate how efficiently a company captures portions of sales dollars. RF Micro Devices has experienced a drop in operating margins year over year for the last four quarters. Operating margins reflect the total sales revenue that the company retains after costs. See how RF Micro Devices has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

28.2%

37.1%

36.5%

35.4%

Operating Margin

(1.0%)

9.4%

6.9%

6.2%

Net Margin

(4.2%)

5.9%

4.2%

11.3%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on RF Micro Devices' 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.