Earnings Preview For Immucor (BLUD)

Immucor Inc. BLUD will be reporting 2011 fiscal third-quarter earnings after the bell today. The consensus estimate for the quarter calls for a profit of $0.27 per share on sales of $79.73 million. The company earned $0.28 cents in the same period a year ago. Earnings estimates have remained constant over the past 90 days. The company engages in the development, manufacture, and sale of reagents and automated systems. Its products are used by hospitals, reference laboratories, and donor centers to detect and identify certain properties of the cell and serum components of human blood for the purpose of blood transfusion. This small cap stock has a market capitalization of $1.40 billion and trades about 430,000 shares per day on the NASDAQ. Immucor is trading near $20, which is near its 52-week high. Investors will be looking to see if the company sheds some light on hospital capital spending. Hospitals have made it a point to be careful what they spend their budgets on due to tight economic conditions, so any sign that the improving economy is causing hospitals to open their wallets could pave the way for a rally in the shares. Immucor is trading at 17.5x current-year estimates of $1.14 per share. The company has managed to exceed earnings estimates in three out of the previous four quarters, with one quarter meeting the consensus estimate.