Altria (MO) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know
Altria (MO) closed the most recent trading day at $44.59, moving -1.41% from the previous trading session. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 2.65%. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 1.86%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.24%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the owner of Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker had gained 6.95% over the past month. This has outpaced the Consumer Staples sector's loss of 6.4% and the S&P 500's loss of 8.99% in that time.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Altria as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be October 27, 2022. On that day, Altria is projected to report earnings of $1.31 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 7.38%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $5.64 billion, up 1.95% from the year-ago period.
MO's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $4.85 per share and revenue of $20.83 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +5.21% and -1.33%, respectively.
Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Altria. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.
The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.04% higher. Altria is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.
Digging into valuation, Altria currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 9.32. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 9.04.
It is also worth noting that MO currently has a PEG ratio of 1.55. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. The Tobacco industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.15 as of yesterday's close.
The Tobacco industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 152, which puts it in the bottom 40% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. 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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