Monday, June 25, 2012

Bio-Rad Laboratories Earnings Preview

Bio-Rad Laboratories (NYSE: BIO  ) hasn't been able to establish an earnings trend, bouncing between beating and falling short of estimates during the past fiscal year. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Thursday, Feb. 23. Bio-Rad Laboratories is a manufacturer and worldwide distributor of its own life science research and clinical diagnostics products.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: The majority of analysts back Bio-Rad Laboratories as a buy. But with 60% of analysts rating it a buy, Bio-Rad Laboratories is still below the mean analyst rating of its nearest 10 competitors, which average 60.3% buys. Analysts don't like Bio-Rad Laboratories as much as competitor Cepheid overall. Ten out of 14 analysts rate Cepheid a buy compared to three of five for Bio-Rad Laboratories.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $562.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 5.3% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $1.65 per share. Estimates range from $1.51 to $1.79.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are enthusiastically backing the stock, with 100% giving it an "outperform" rating. The greater community concurs with the All-Stars, as 95.7% give it a rating of "outperform." Even with a robust four out of five stars, Bio-Rad Laboratories' CAPS rating falls a little short of the community's upbeat outlook.

Management:
Bio-Rad Laboratories' profit has risen year over year by an average of 20.5% over the past five quarters. 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. Bio-Rad Laboratories has seen decreasing net margin year over year for the last three quarters. Net margin reflects what percentage of each dollar earned by the company becomes profit. Here is how Bio-Rad Laboratories has been doing for the last four quarters:

Quarter

Q3

Q2

Q1

Q4

Gross Margin

57.3%

56.2%

57.2%

56.2%

Operating Margin

14.3%

13.1%

13.8%

14.6%

Net Margin

8.9%

7.7%

6.8%

12.7%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks.

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