Financial Review: JetBlue Airways (JBLU) vs. Its Rivals

JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU) is one of 78 publicly-traded companies in the “Passenger Airlines” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its peers? We will compare JetBlue Airways to related companies based on the strength of its risk, valuation, dividends, earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares JetBlue Airways and its peers revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
JetBlue Airways	$9.06 billion	-$602.00 million	-1.37
JetBlue Airways Competitors	$14.66 billion	$637.69 million	18.87

JetBlue Airways’ peers have higher revenue and earnings than JetBlue Airways. JetBlue Airways is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

83.7% of JetBlue Airways shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 42.0% of shares of all “Passenger Airlines” companies are owned by institutional investors. 2.4% of JetBlue Airways shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 10.5% of shares of all “Passenger Airlines” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for JetBlue Airways and its peers, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
JetBlue Airways	4	9	1	0	1.79
JetBlue Airways Competitors	1526	4062	6683	354	2.46

JetBlue Airways presently has a consensus target price of $4.94, indicating a potential upside of 34.54%. As a group, “Passenger Airlines” companies have a potential upside of 8.98%. Given JetBlue Airways’ higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe JetBlue Airways is more favorable than its peers.

Volatility and Risk

JetBlue Airways has a beta of 1.9, meaning that its stock price is 90% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, JetBlue Airways’ peers have a beta of 18.44, meaning that their average stock price is 1,744% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares JetBlue Airways and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
JetBlue Airways	-10.01%	-56.96%	-5.96%
JetBlue Airways Competitors	-18.05%	5.62%	1.06%

Summary

JetBlue Airways peers beat JetBlue Airways on 10 of the 13 factors compared.

JetBlue Airways Company Profile

JetBlue Airways Corporation provides air transportation services. The company operates a fleet of Airbus A321, Airbus A220, Airbus A321neo, Airbus A320 Restyled, Airbus A320, Airbus A321 with Mint, Airbus A321neo with Mint, Airbus A321neoLR with Mint, and Embraer E190 aircraft. It also serves 100 destinations across the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, Canada, and Europe. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is based in Long Island City, New York.