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Spark Energy (SPKE) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

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Spark Energy closed the most recent trading day at $9.44, moving +0.75% from the previous trading session. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.01%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.66%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 1.43%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the electricity and natural gas retailer had gained 2.18% over the past month. This has lagged the Utilities sector's gain of 4.01% and outpaced the S&P 500's gain of 0.19% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from SPKE as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect SPKE to post earnings of $0.05 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 117.24%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $190.70 million, down 16.55% from the year-ago period.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for SPKE should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. SPKE is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

The Utility - Electric Power industry is part of the Utilities sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 108, which puts it in the top 43% 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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