Square (SQ) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

Square (SQ) closed at $233.89 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.33% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.4%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the mobile payments services provider had gained 18.52% over the past month. This has outpaced the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 7.26% and the S&P 500's gain of 1.07% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from SQ as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect SQ to post earnings of $0.31 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 72.22%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $4.86 billion, up 152.67% from the year-ago period.

SQ's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $1.50 per share and revenue of $19.65 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +78.57% and +106.89%, respectively.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for SQ. 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.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 7.33% higher. SQ is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, SQ is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 158.3. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 77.53, so we one might conclude that SQ is trading at a premium comparatively.

Investors should also note that SQ has a PEG ratio of 3.36 right now. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Internet - Software was holding an average PEG ratio of 3.35 at yesterday's closing price.

The Internet - Software industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 208, which puts it in the bottom 19% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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