Apple (AAPL) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know
Apple (AAPL) closed the most recent trading day at $270.77, moving +0.85% from the previous trading session. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.29%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.11%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.44%.
Coming into today, shares of the maker of iPhones, iPads and other products had gained 2.49% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector gained 1.17%, while the S&P 500 gained 1.51%.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from AAPL as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $4.53, up 8.37% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $87.74 billion, up 4.07% from the year-ago period.
For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $13.18 per share and revenue of $275.09 billion, which would represent changes of +10.85% and +5.73%, respectively, from the prior year.
Any recent changes to analyst estimates for AAPL should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest 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. 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.
The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.06% higher within the past month. AAPL is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Digging into valuation, AAPL currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 20.37. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 9.49, so we one might conclude that AAPL is trading at a premium comparatively.
Meanwhile, AAPL's PEG ratio is currently 1.94. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. The Computer - Mini computers was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.94 at yesterday's closing price.
The Computer - Mini computers industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 193, which puts it in the bottom 25% 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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