Fastenal (FAST) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know
Fastenal (FAST) closed the most recent trading day at $48.68, moving +1.31% from the previous trading session. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.19%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.49%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.45%.
Coming into today, shares of the maker of industrial and construction fasteners had gained 3.69% in the past month. In that same time, the Retail-Wholesale sector gained 1.84%, while the S&P 500 gained 7.68%.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from FAST as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.32, up 3.23% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $1.31 billion, up 2.88% from the year-ago period.
For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $1.47 per share and revenue of $5.61 billion, which would represent changes of +6.52% and +5.09%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for FAST. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.
Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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 remained stagnant. FAST is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Investors should also note FAST's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 32.69. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 16.99, so we one might conclude that FAST is trading at a premium comparatively.
We can also see that FAST currently has a PEG ratio of 3.63. 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. Building Products - Retail stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.07 based on yesterday's closing prices.
The Building Products - Retail industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 35, which puts it in the top 14% 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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