Central Garden (CENT) Moves 5.8% Higher: Will This Strength Last?

Central Garden & Pet Company CENT shares rallied 5.8% in the last trading session to close at $42.08. This move can be attributable to notable volume with a higher number of shares being traded than in a typical session. This compares to the stock's 5.5% loss over the past four weeks.

Central Garden & Pet Company is employing a multi-faceted strategy to strengthen its position in the pet and garden supply space. The company’s strategic initiatives to simplify business operations, improve efficiency, and leverage scale through cost and simplicity programs underline a proactive approach to long-term sustainability.

This maker of products for the pet supply and lawn and garden markets is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.83 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +15.3%. Revenues are expected to be $894.49 million, down 1.6% from the year-ago quarter.

Earnings and revenue growth expectations certainly give a good sense of the potential strength in a stock, but empirical research shows that trends in earnings estimate revisions are strongly correlated with near-term stock price movements.

For Central Garden, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. And a stock's price usually doesn't keep moving higher in the absence of any trend in earnings estimate revisions. So, make sure to keep an eye on CENT going forward to see if this recent jump can turn into more strength down the road.

The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>

Central Garden belongs to the Zacks Consumer Products - Discretionary industry. Another stock from the same industry, Spectrum Brands (SPB), closed the last trading session 0.9% higher at $80.51. Over the past month, SPB has returned -9.2%.

For Spectrum , the consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $0.49. This represents a change of +450% from what the company reported a year ago. Spectrum currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

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