Lions Gate Entertainment: What to expect in the Q1 report

Still, the price action on Lions Gate has been interesting. I am eagerly awaiting the Q1 results that will be released on Monday, August 10, after the bell. What can we expect? Well, let's turn to Earnings.com. According to that source, investors should prepare themselves for a loss of 5 cents per share. That compares rather horribly to a profit of 6 cents per share in the year-ago period.

I don't have any quantity of confidence that the studio will beat on Monday. The third quarter was far from awesome. And the fourth quarter was no happy day either.

Shareholders will be concentrating on the statement of cash flows when the release is issued. Lions Gate has been down on that count lately. Movies sometimes hit, and sometimes they don't; slates can be strong or they can be weak. No matter how you want to express it, the bottom line is this: Hollywood represents huge risk to Wall Street. Talent demands to be overpaid for services rendered. Marketing costs have skyrocketed. Poor Lions Gate is experiencing a tough streak.

Under no circumstances would I buy shares of Lions Gate before the report. Instead, here's what traders should hope for (and my apologies in advance to actual investors in the company for writing this): the Q1 numbers turn out to be bad, but not terribly bad, and the stock sells off over a buck on high volume. If you've been paying attention at all to the price action of the stock, I think you'll agree with me when I theorize that a small bounce to the upside might occur after such an event.

Then again, maybe you don't agree. Lions Gate is not a stock for everyone. But I so much want to capture one little successful trade with the company. We'll see what happens.

Disclosure: I own Disney; positions can change without notice.