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American Airlines (AAL) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, American Airlines (AAL - Free Report) closed at $12.61, marking a -0.71% move from the previous day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.02%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.22%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the world's largest airline had lost 14.77% over the past month. This has lagged the Transportation sector's loss of 4.78% and the S&P 500's loss of 2.86% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from American Airlines as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.59, down 14.49% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $13.58 billion, up 0.84% from the prior-year quarter.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $2.88 per share and revenue of $53.14 billion. These totals would mark changes of +476% and +8.5%, respectively, from last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for American Airlines should also be noted by investors. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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.

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 9.33% lower within the past month. American Airlines is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that American Airlines has a Forward P/E ratio of 4.4 right now. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 7.59, which means American Airlines is trading at a discount to the group.

We can also see that AAL currently has a PEG ratio of 0.08. 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. AAL's industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.35 as of yesterday's close.

The Transportation - Airline industry is part of the Transportation sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 175, which puts it in the bottom 31% 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.

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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