Caterpillar (CAT) Stock Moves -1.07%: What You Should Know
Caterpillar (CAT) closed the most recent trading day at $232.57, moving -1.07% from the previous trading session. This change was narrower than the S&P 500's 1.48% loss on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 1.05%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.46%.
Heading into today, shares of the construction equipment company had gained 5.81% over the past month, outpacing the Industrial Products sector's loss of 1.07% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.08% in that time.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Caterpillar as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be April 28, 2022. On that day, Caterpillar is projected to report earnings of $2.66 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 7.32%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $13.49 billion, up 13.5% from the year-ago period.
For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $12.32 per share and revenue of $57.72 billion, which would represent changes of +13.97% and +13.24%, respectively, from the prior year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Caterpillar. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, 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 0.35% lower. Caterpillar currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Digging into valuation, Caterpillar currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.08. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 12.25, so we one might conclude that Caterpillar is trading at a premium comparatively.
It is also worth noting that CAT currently has a PEG ratio of 1.59. 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. The Manufacturing - Construction and Mining industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 0.46 as of yesterday's close.
The Manufacturing - Construction and Mining industry is part of the Industrial Products sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 107, which puts it in the top 43% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our 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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