Buckeye Technologies Earnings Preview

Motley Fool Staff
Updated

Buckeye Technologies (NYS: BKI) beat estimates by $0.07 last quarter and investors are hoping it can beat them again. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Buckeye Technologies is a producer of value-added cellulose-based specialty products.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are very bullish on this stock, unanimously backing it as a buy. Analysts like Buckeye Technologies better than competitor Sappi overall. Zero out of two analysts rate Sappi a buy compared to four of four for Buckeye Technologies. 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 $239.2 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 14.2% from the year-ago quarter.

  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.66 per share. Estimates range from $0.65 to $0.68.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly backing the stock with 100% giving it an "outperform" rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 96.5% granting it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on Buckeye Technologies, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 54 posts in the past 30 days. Buckeye Technologies has a bullish CAPS rating of five out of five stars that is about on par with the Fool community assessment.

Management:
Buckeye Technologies' income has fallen year over year by an average of 1.5% over the past five quarters. The company upped its gross margin by 5.7 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 18.8% while cost of sales rose 10.5% to $183.2 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. The following table shows gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

23.7%

23.3%

24.2%

21.2%

Operating Margin

18.3%

12.1%

18.5%

15.1%

Net Margin

17.1%

5.5%

12.1%

8.1%

One final thing: If you want to keep tabs on Buckeye Technologies 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.

At the time thisarticle was published

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