UMB Earnings Preview

UMB (Nasdaq: UMBF  ) 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 Tuesday, Jan. 24. UMB Financial is a multi-bank holding company, which offers a range of banking and other financial services to its customers through its branches and offices.

What analysts say:

• Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on UMB with three of five analysts rating it hold. Analysts like UMB better than competitor Great Southern Bancorp overall. Zero out of three analysts rate Great Southern Bancorp a buy compared to one of five for UMB. Analysts haven't adjusted their rating of UMB for the past three months.
• Revenue Forecasts: On average, analysts predict $157 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a decline of 9.5% from the year-ago quarter.
• Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.61 cents per share. Estimates range from $0.58 cents to $0.65 cents.

What our community says:
The majority of CAPS All-Stars see UMBF as a good bet, with 75% assigning it an "outperform" rating. The majority of Fools are in agreement with the All-Stars, as 75.6% give it an "outperform" rating. Fools are keen on UMB, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 16 posts in the past 30 days. UMB has a bullish CAPS rating of four out of five stars that is about on par with Fool community assessment.

Management:
UMB's profit has risen year over year by an average of 6.6% 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. The following table shows net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter	Q3	Q2	Q1	Q4
Net Margin	13.9%	13.5%	15.9%	10.5%

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