Blue Nile (Nasdaq: 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 Tuesday, November 8. 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 11 analysts rating it hold. Analysts don't like Blue Nile as much as competitor Zale overall. One out of four analysts rate Zale a buy compared to one of 11 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 $72.6 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 7.6% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street Earnings Expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of 18 cents per share. Estimates range from 16 cents to 25 cents.

What our community says:
 CAPS All Stars are solidly behind the stock with 80.4% granting it an "outperform" rating. The community at large concurs with the All Stars with 77.4% assigning it a rating of "outperform." Fools are keen on Blue Nile and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 492 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 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 gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q2

Q1

Q4

Q3

Gross Margin

21.3%

21.1%

22%

21.7%

Operating Margin

5.3%

4.4%

8%

6.3%

Net Margin

3.5%

3%

5.4%

4.1%

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

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