Blue Nile Earnings Preview

Motley Fool Staff
Updated

Blue Nile (NAS: NILE) 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. Blue Nile is an online retailer of high-quality diamonds and fine jewelry in the United States.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts think investors should stand pat on Blue Nile with nine of 13 analysts rating it hold. Analysts like Blue Nile better than competitor Zale overall. Zero out of three analysts rate Zale a buy compared to three of 13 for Blue Nile. While analysts still rate the stock a hold, they are a little more optimistic about it compared to three months ago.

  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $84.1 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 9.8% from the year-ago quarter.

  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.22 per share. Estimates range from $0.20 to $0.29.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 81.5% granting it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 77% assigning it a rating of outperform. Fools are keen on Blue Nile and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 487 posts in the past 30 days. Blue Nile's bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
Blue Nile's profit has risen year over year by an average of 5.3%. 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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q1

Q4

Q3

Q2

Gross Margin

21.1%

22%

21.7%

21.1%

Operating Margin

4.4%

8%

6.3%

5.5%

Net Margin

3%

5.4%

4.1%

3.7%

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At the time thisarticle was published

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