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Prudential (PRU) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Prudential (PRU - Free Report) closed at $115.40 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.26% move from the prior day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 1.24% gain on the day. At the same time, the Dow added 1.23%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.15%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the financial services company had lost 3.55% over the past month. This has lagged the Finance sector's loss of 3.28% and the S&P 500's loss of 2.45% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Prudential as it approaches its next earnings report date. On that day, Prudential is projected to report earnings of $2.95 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 28.22%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $13.95 billion, down 1.84% from the prior-year quarter.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $12.10 per share and revenue of $54.92 billion. These totals would mark changes of -17.01% and -9.56%, respectively, from last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Prudential should also be noted by investors. 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.

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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 1.14% lower. Prudential is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

Digging into valuation, Prudential currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 9.42. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 9.55, so we one might conclude that Prudential is trading at a discount comparatively.

We can also see that PRU currently has a PEG ratio of 1.05. 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. PRU's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.24 as of yesterday's close.

The Insurance - Multi line industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 199, which puts it in the bottom 22% 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.

Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.


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