Home Depot (HD) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know
Home Depot (HD) closed at $186.39 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.02% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.47%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.68%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.74%.
Heading into today, shares of the home-improvement retailer had gained 5.3% over the past month, lagging the Retail-Wholesale sector's gain of 6.95% and the S&P 500's gain of 7.71% in that time.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from HD as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be February 26, 2019. In that report, analysts expect HD to post earnings of $2.17 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 28.4%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $26.58 billion, up 11.28% from the year-ago period.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for HD. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.
Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. 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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.3% lower. HD is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Investors should also note HD's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 18.27. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 11.89, so we one might conclude that HD is trading at a premium comparatively.
Also, we should mention that HD has a PEG ratio of 1.41. 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 Building Products - Retail was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.11 at yesterday's closing price.
The Building Products - Retail industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 91, which puts it in the top 36% 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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