Before the Call: Untying The Knot

Spring is in the air, and with it, wedding season. And with it, earnings news due out from The Knot.com (NASDAQ:KNOT) tomorrow afternoon.

After the news comes out, we'll have time aplenty to dissect it. But in these few hours before we begin obsessing over The Knot's short-term progress, let's take a moment to review what investors think about it as a long-term investment. Our tool in this endeavor: Motley Fool CAPS, where we poll more than 28,000 rated investors for their views on well over 4,000 companies, The Knot among them. Here's what Fools have to say about the company.

Up or down?
More than 500 investors have submitted opinions on The Knot. The verdict: Tie one on. Just over 96% of CAPS investors polled say they love the stock, which suffices to earn this Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendation four out of a possible five CAPS stars.

Among its CAPS e-commerce peers, The Knot is top of the heap:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
You know the 4% endorsement that The Knot lost on Main Street? It found it on Wall Street. Among professional investors tracked by CAPS, the company gets a unanimous seven out of seven outperform ratings -- which is interesting when you notice that the stock is basically flat against the S&P 500 over the last 52 weeks.

Bull pitch
Does altruism have a place in investing? Let's hope not. One of the best pitches I've found for The Knot on CAPS practically exudes cynicism -- but that doesn't detract one whit from its accuracy: "What better way to get into a high margin and highly emotional industry, w/ shoppers having little to no experience in what they are buying. I don't remember my wife once questioning the price on anything for our wedding (only its quality), nor do I remember ever having a sense of something being a good price or not."

Bear pitch
To which bears reply that, sure, "people spend a lot of money to get married. I'm sure there's room to grab some of that. But ... what is it they do that millions of others can't? How much of this stuff can be done online vs. locally? And even if they continue to grow, can they grow profits fast enough to justify the P/E AND outpace the market? I'm skeptical, and I also suspect if they're successful, in a few years there will be several good competitors."

Good questions all. Let's see how well The Knot responds to them on the morrow.

Who said that?
To learn the identities of the wise Fools who penned these thoughts, and explore the plethora of additional financial data we've put together on the company, just click here.

The Knot, Blue Nile, and Bankrate are Rule Breakers selections. Blue Nile is also a Hidden Gems pick. eBay, Priceline, and Amazon are Stock Advisor recommendations.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. You can find him on CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handle TMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 530 out of more than 28,000 raters. The Fool has a disclosure policy.