Here's Why You Should Hold On To TriMas (TRS) Stock For Now

TriMas Corporation (NASDAQ:TRS) remains well poised for growth backed by its focus on leveraging the TriMas Business Model, segment restructuring and a booming Aerospace segment. A positive trend in estimate revisions also reflects optimism over the company’s prospects. However, currency volatility and escalating steel prices remain headwinds.

The maker of engineered and applied products, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.13 billion, carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The stock has an estimated long-term earnings growth rate of 5%.

Below, we briefly discuss the company’s potential growth drivers and possible headwinds.

Factors Favoring TriMas

Northbound Estimates

Over the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year and the current quarter has moved up around 5.6% and 11.8%, respectively.

Value Growth Momentum (VGM) Score

TriMas currently has a Zacks VGM Score of A. Here V stands for Value, G for Growth and M for Momentum. Such a score allows you to eliminate the negative aspects of stocks and select winners. The VGM Score of A, along with some other key metrics, makes the company a solid choice for investors.

Positive Earnings Surprise History

TriMas surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the last four quarters, with an average beat of 3.78%

Price Performance

TriMas has outperformed its industry with respect to price performance over the past year. The stock has appreciated around 18.2% while the industry has recorded growth of 0.5% during the same time frame.

Return on Assets (ROA)

TriMas currently has a ROA of 6.1% while the industry's ROA is 3.2%. An above-average ROA denotes that the company is generating earnings by effectively managing assets.

Growth Drivers in Place

TriMas will gain from its continuous focus on leveraging the TriMas Business Model. Its innovative solutions through product, process or service, as well as extensive resources will help strengthen business.

Further, the company remains focused on realignment actions and improvement of cost structure. Accordingly, TriMas will combine the company’s Engineered Components and Energy segments into a single reporting segment — Specialty Products. The company will report results under the new segment structure from first-quarter 2018. TriMas expects the new segment to attain sales growth of nearly 5% in 2018.

Moreover, its Aerospace segment benefitted in 2017 from increased production throughput and deliveries as well as solid order demand. Recently, TriMas’ Monogram Aerospace Fasteners business was awarded a 2017 Supply Chain & Quality Improvement award by Airbus due to its significant efforts to improve quality and on-time delivery, and commitment to deliver outstanding service to customers. Thus, the company continues to see more stable order patterns from customers, which will result in further opportunities for improved manufacturing efficiencies over time.

Headwinds

A stronger dollar makes TriMas’ product exports more difficult and translation impacts also hamper the company’s packaging and energy businesses sales in Europe and the U.K. Thus, strengthening of the U.S. dollar compared to other currencies will affect the company’s performance.

In addition, steel being the main input material to produce high-pressure cylinders, escalation in its prices has been denting TriMas’ Norris business. Steel prices will continue flaring up through the first and second quarters of 2018 due to seasonal demand. The company expects prices to remain higher on average than the prior year.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks in the same sector are Allegion PLC (NYSE:ALLE) , AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) and Avery Dennison Corporation (NYSE:AVY) . While Allegion sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), AptarGroup and Avery Dennison carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Allegion has a long-term earnings growth rate of 12.3%. Its shares have rallied 10.7%, over the past year.

AptarGroup has a long-term earnings growth rate of 8.5%. The company’s shares have been up 13% during the part year.

Avery Dennison has a long-term earnings growth rate of 7%. The stock has gained 29.5% in a year’s time.

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