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American Express (AXP) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

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American Express (AXP - Free Report) closed at $179.06 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.02% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.07%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.12%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 1.47%.

Coming into today, shares of the credit card issuer and global payments company had gained 0.13% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector lost 1.99%, while the S&P 500 lost 2%.

Investors will be hoping for strength from American Express as it approaches its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect American Express to post earnings of $2.66 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 2.56%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $13.98 billion, up 19.16% from the prior-year quarter.

AXP's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $11.24 per share and revenue of $61.11 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +14.11% and +15.59%, respectively.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for American Express. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-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. 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. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.09% higher within the past month. American Express is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, American Express is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 15.93. This valuation marks a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 9.49.

It is also worth noting that AXP currently has a PEG ratio of 1.1. 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. AXP's industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.78 as of yesterday's close.

The Financial - Miscellaneous Services industry is part of the Finance sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 169, putting it in the bottom 33% 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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