Abbott (ABT) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know
Abbott (ABT) closed the most recent trading day at $69.13, moving +1.5% from the previous trading session. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.7% gain on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.42%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.26%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the maker of infant formula, medical devices and drugs had lost 4.79% over the past month. This has was narrower than the Medical sector's loss of 6.76% and the S&P 500's loss of 6.13% in that time.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from ABT as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be January 23, 2019. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.81, up 9.46% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $7.79 billion, up 2.62% from the year-ago period.
Any recent changes to analyst estimates for ABT should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.
Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.03% higher. ABT is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.
Digging into valuation, ABT currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 21.35. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 20.92, so we one might conclude that ABT is trading at a premium comparatively.
We can also see that ABT currently has a PEG ratio of 1.82. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. Medical - Products stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.98 based on yesterday's closing prices.
The Medical - Products industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 155, which puts it in the bottom 39% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.
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Abbott Laboratories (ABT) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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