Earnings Preview for Priceline.com (PCLN)

Priceline.com (NYSE: PCLN) will be reporting first-quarter 2011 results Thursday afternoon. Analysts are looking for the online travel company to announce that earnings rose 30.6% from a year ago to $2.45 per share. That consensus estimate is unchanged from 60 days ago. Analysts also expect to see revenues of $779.2 million for the quarter, which represents a 33.3% jump from the same period of last year.

Connecticut-based Priceline provides various travel services, including airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals and travel insurance, as well as destination services such as parking, event tickets and tours. In the United States, the company offers customers a Name Your Own Price service. Priceline also operates Booking.com, Active Hotels, Lowestfare.com, Rentalcars.com, MyTravelGuide.com and Travelweb.

So far, analysts anticipate sequential and year-over-year growth of both per-share earnings and revenue in the second quarter. Note that analysts have underestimated Priceline's earnings in the past five quarters; earnings beat the consensus estimate by 30 cents per share in the fourth quarter.

Priceline has a healthy return on equity of 31.5% and a long-term EPS growth forecast of 22.1%. Analysts on average recommend buying the stock. Shares are trading near the multi-year high of $561.88. In the past three months, Priceline has outperformed competitors Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) and Orbitz (NYSE: OWW), as well as the broader market.