Black Box Earnings Preview

Investors braced for a bumpy ride ahead of Black Box's (NAS: BBOX) earnings announcement, for 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, August 2. Black Box is a network infrastructure services provider. It offers one-source network infrastructure services for communications systems. It designs, installs, integrates, monitors, and maintains voice, data, and integrated communications systems.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts generally think investors should hang on to Black Box, with half rating the stock a hold. Analysts don't like Black Box as much as competitor Datalink overall. Three out of three analysts rate Datalink a buy compared to one of two for Black Box. Black Box's rating hasn't changed over the past three months.

• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $261.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 0.9% from the year-ago quarter.

• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.80 per share. Estimates range from $0.77 to $0.82.

What our community says:
CAPS All Stars are solidly behind the stock, with 92.3% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large backs the All Stars, with 84.9% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools have embraced Black Box, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 29 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Black Box, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Black Box's profit has risen year over year by an average of 55.9%. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

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. The following table shows gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters:

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

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

At the time thisarticle was published

Copyright © 1995 - 2011 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.