MasterCard (MA) Stock Moves -0.98%: What You Should Know

MasterCard (MA) closed the most recent trading day at $339.69, moving -0.98% from the previous trading session. This move was narrower than the S&P 500's daily loss of 1.7%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the processor of debit and credit card payments had lost 3.37% over the past month. This has lagged the Business Services sector's gain of 0.77% and the S&P 500's loss of 0.27% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from MA as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect MA to post earnings of $2.18 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 36.25%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $4.95 billion, up 28.91% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $8.11 per share and revenue of $18.77 billion, which would represent changes of +26.13% and +22.69%, respectively, from the prior year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for MA should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest 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. 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 remained stagnant. MA is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, MA is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 42.32. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 21.09, so we one might conclude that MA is trading at a premium comparatively.

We can also see that MA currently has a PEG ratio of 1.95. 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 Financial Transaction Services was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.29 at yesterday's closing price.

The Financial Transaction Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 121, putting it in the top 48% 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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