General Electric (GE) closed the most recent trading day at $9.28, moving -0.11% from the previous trading session. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.56%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.76%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.38%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the industrial conglomerate had lost 26.62% over the past month. This has lagged the Conglomerates sector's loss of 12.63% and the S&P 500's loss of 6.76% in that time.
Investors will be hoping for strength from GE as it approaches its next earnings release, which is expected to be January 23, 2019. In that report, analysts expect GE to post earnings of $0.20 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 25.93%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $32.02 billion, up 1.98% from the year-ago period.
Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $0.68 per share and revenue of $120.41 billion. These totals would mark changes of -35.24% and -1.38%, respectively, from last year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for GE. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of 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. 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 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 24.24% lower. GE is holding a Zacks Rank of #5 (Strong Sell) right now.
Looking at its valuation, GE is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 13.61. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 17.3, which means GE is trading at a discount to the group.
Meanwhile, GE's PEG ratio is currently 2.47. 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. The Diversified Operations was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.86 at yesterday's closing price.
The Diversified Operations industry is part of the Conglomerates sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 177, which puts it in the bottom 31% 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.
You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.
General Electric Company (NYSE:GE
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Zacks Investment Research