PH Glatfelter Turns More Into Less:
Margins matter. The more PH Glatfelter keeps of each buck it earns in revenue, the more money it has to invest in growth, fund new strategic plans, or (gasp!) distribute to shareholders. Healthy margins often separate pretenders from the best stocks in the market. That's why we check up on margins at least once a quarter in this series. I'm looking for the absolute numbers, so I can compare them to current and potential competitors, and any trend that may tell me how strong PH Glatfelter's competitive position could be. Here's the current margin snapshot for PH Glatfelter over the trailing 12 months: Gross margin is 13.2%, while operating margin is 5.3% and net margin is 3.5%.Unfortunately, a look at the most recent numbers doesn't tell us much about where PH Glatfelter has been, or where it's going. A company with rising gross and operating margins often fuels its growth by increasing demand for its products. If it sells more units while keeping costs in check, its profitability increases. Conversely, a company with gross margins that inch downward over time is often losing out to competition, and possibly engaging in a race to the bottom on prices. If it can't make up for this problem by cutting costs -- and most companies can't -- then both the business and its shares face a decidedly bleak outlook.
