Blue Nile Earnings Set To Tell All (NILE)

Blue Nile, Inc. (NASDAQ:NILE) is set to report earnings after the close today.  The online jewelry retailer is expected to post earnings of $0.16 EPS on $68 million revenues.  The estimates for calendar and fiscal Q4 are $0.44 EPS and just over $114 million in revenues.  If the company offers any fiscal guidance for 2008 the estimates are $1.29 EPS and $389.6 million in revenues; which represents roughly a 26% gain in EPS and a 21% revenue gain compared to consensus estimates.

Blue Nile has recovered a bit from recent lows, but shares are well off the $100+ highs of early to mid-October.  Options traders appear braced for a move of over $6.00 based upoin current pricing.  As shares are still up more than 100% from the end of 2006 and since Blue Nile is no longer in that massive uptrend, it looks like some traders have been stepping out of the way ahead of the earnings.  The mid-October short interest listed 3.364 million shares as the short interest, which is about 5.2-times average daily volume.

Analysts are all over the map on price targets here, and we recently noted how Citigroup made one of the recent upgrades from a Sell to a Hold ahead of the event.

Here was the August 6 preview for that round of earnings if you wish to compare.

Jon C. Ogg
November 6, 2007