Home Depot (HD) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Home Depot (HD) closed at $321.54, marking a +0.83% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.52%.

Heading into today, shares of the home-improvement retailer had gained 1.81% over the past month, lagging the Retail-Wholesale sector's gain of 4.22% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.25% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from HD as it approaches its next earnings release. On that day, HD is projected to report earnings of $4.33 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 7.71%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $40.05 billion, up 5.24% from the year-ago period.

HD's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $14 per share and revenue of $143.15 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +16.38% and +8.35%, respectively.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for HD. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for 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.

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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.75% higher. HD is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Investors should also note HD's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 22.77. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 16.74.

We can also see that HD currently has a PEG ratio of 1.99. 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 Building Products - Retail industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.3 as of yesterday's close.

The Building Products - Retail industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 42, putting it in the top 17% 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.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.


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