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Ulta Beauty (ULTA) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Ulta Beauty (ULTA - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $523.15, moving +0.61% from the previous trading session. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.31%. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.22%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.28%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the beauty products retailer had gained 2.83% over the past month. This has outpaced the Retail-Wholesale sector's loss of 4.4% and the S&P 500's loss of 1% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Ulta Beauty as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be March 9, 2023. In that report, analysts expect Ulta Beauty to post earnings of $5.53 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 2.22%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $3.01 billion, up 10.25% from the year-ago period.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Ulta Beauty. 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.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.43% higher. Ulta Beauty is holding a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy) right now.

Digging into valuation, Ulta Beauty currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 21.41. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 15.61, so we one might conclude that Ulta Beauty is trading at a premium comparatively.

Meanwhile, ULTA's PEG ratio is currently 1.56. 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. Retail - Miscellaneous stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.94 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Retail - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 97, which puts it in the top 39% 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.

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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