Yahoo Finance General Electric (GE) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know
General Electric (GE) closed at $66 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.09% move from the prior day. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.22%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.13%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.22%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the industrial conglomerate had lost 12.29% over the past month. This has lagged the Conglomerates sector's loss of 9.09% and the S&P 500's loss of 10.02% in that time.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from General Electric as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.39, down 2.5% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $18.07 billion, down 1.17% from the prior-year quarter.
Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $2.82 per share and revenue of $76.68 billion. These totals would mark changes of +33.02% and +3.44%, respectively, from last year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for General Electric. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.
Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.39% lower within the past month. General Electric is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).
Looking at its valuation, General Electric is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 23.4. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 13.99, so we one might conclude that General Electric is trading at a premium comparatively.
Also, we should mention that GE has a PEG ratio of 3.34. 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. GE's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.26 as of yesterday's close.
The Diversified Operations industry is part of the Conglomerates sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 42, which puts it in the top 17% 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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