United Continental (UAL) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know
United Continental (UAL) closed at $92.56 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.43% move from the prior day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.25% loss on the day. At the same time, the Dow added 0.04%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.53%.
Coming into today, shares of the airline had gained 16.76% in the past month. In that same time, the Transportation sector lost 3.33%, while the S&P 500 lost 2.35%.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from UAL as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be January 22, 2019. The company is expected to report EPS of $1.77, up 26.43% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $10.39 billion, up 10.04% from the year-ago period.
Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $8.45 per share and revenue of $41.19 billion. These totals would mark changes of +25% and +9.16%, respectively, from last year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for UAL. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of 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. 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 ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 2.83% higher. UAL is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Looking at its valuation, UAL is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 10.9. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 12.85, which means UAL is trading at a discount to the group.
Also, we should mention that UAL has a PEG ratio of 0.5. 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 Transportation - Airline industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 0.68 as of yesterday's close.
The Transportation - Airline industry is part of the Transportation sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 202, which puts it in the bottom 21% 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.
You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.
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