McDonald's (MCD) closed the most recent trading day at $182.37, moving +0.45% from the previous trading session. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.02%. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 0.03%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.21%.
Coming into today, shares of the world's biggest hamburger chain had lost 2.62% in the past month. In that same time, the Retail-Wholesale sector lost 0.15%, while the S&P 500 lost 1.4%.
Wall Street will be looking for positivity from MCD as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be January 30, 2019. The company is expected to report EPS of $1.89, up 10.53% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $5.16 billion, down 3.44% from the prior-year quarter.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for MCD. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.
Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.12% lower. MCD is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.
Valuation is also important, so investors should note that MCD has a Forward P/E ratio of 21.96 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 20.94, so we one might conclude that MCD is trading at a premium comparatively.
Meanwhile, MCD's PEG ratio is currently 2.5. 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. MCD's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.64 as of yesterday's close.
The Retail - Restaurants industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 171, which puts it in the bottom 34% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our 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.
McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD
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