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Lowe's (LOW) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Lowe's (LOW - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $195.88, moving +0.58% from the previous trading session. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.34%.

Heading into today, shares of the home improvement retailer had gained 1.75% over the past month, lagging the Retail-Wholesale sector's gain of 3.27% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.71% in that time.

LOW will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect LOW to post earnings of $3.87 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 3.2%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $26.87 billion, down 1.59% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $10.82 per share and revenue of $91.63 billion. These totals would mark changes of +22.12% and +2.26%, respectively, from last year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for LOW. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

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 has moved 0.54% higher. LOW currently has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).

In terms of valuation, LOW is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 18.01. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 15.88, which means LOW is trading at a premium to the group.

We can also see that LOW currently has a PEG ratio of 1.31. 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. The Building Products - Retail industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.31 as of yesterday's close.

The Building Products - Retail industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 7, putting it in the top 3% 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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