Investors are bracing for the worst and waiting to see whether JetBlue Airways (Nasdaq: JBLU) will fall short of Wall Street forecasts for the consecutive quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Tuesday. JetBlue Airways is an innovative passenger airline that provides award-winning customer service at competitive fares mainly on point-to-point routes.

What analysts say

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on JetBlue Airways as six analysts rate it as a buy and only two analysts rate it as a sell. Analysts don't like JetBlue Airways as much as competitor US Airways Group overall. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.
  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $1.14 billion in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 21.4% from the year-ago quarter.
  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.09 per share. Estimates range from $0.05 to $0.12.

What our community says
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 83% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large agrees with the All-Stars with 81.9% granting it a rating of outperform. Fools have embraced JetBlue Airways and haven't been shy with their opinions lately, logging 619 posts in the past 30 days. JetBlue Airways' bearish CAPS rating of two out of five stars falls short of the Fool community sentiment.

Management:
The company's gross margin shrank by 3.5 percentage points in the last quarter. Revenue rose 16.3% while cost of sales rose 23.2% to $631 million from a year earlier.

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

37.6%

41.3%

45.4%

43.6%

Operating Margin

4.4%

6.1%

13.6%

10.0%

Net Margin

0.3%

1.0%

5.7%

3.2%

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