Global Payments (GPN) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know
Global Payments (GPN) closed the most recent trading day at $149.88, moving +1.73% from the previous trading session. This change lagged the S&P 500's 1.89% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 1.17%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.75%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the electronics payment processing company had gained 8.99% over the past month. This has outpaced the Business Services sector's loss of 23.77% and the S&P 500's loss of 7.36% in that time.
Global Payments will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. The company is expected to report EPS of $2.12, up 17.78% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $1.97 billion, up 12.41% from the year-ago period.
Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Global Payments. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-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.
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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.92% lower. Global Payments is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Valuation is also important, so investors should note that Global Payments has a Forward P/E ratio of 15.44 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 16.41, so we one might conclude that Global Payments is trading at a discount comparatively.
Meanwhile, GPN's PEG ratio is currently 0.83. 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 Financial Transaction Services industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.15 as of yesterday's close.
The Financial Transaction Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 205, putting it in the bottom 20% 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.
Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.
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