2 Highly Ranked Stocks to Consider After Q2 Earnings: CLS, EXEL

Among the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) list, electronics manufacturer Celestica CLS and oncology-focused biotech firm Exelixis EXEL are two highly ranked stocks that are worthy of consideration after exceeding their Q2 earnings expectations on Monday evening.

Although Celestica and Exelixis stock moved in different directions in Tuesday's trading session, both have set up intriguing buying opportunities following their Q2 reports.

Celestica Stock Hits an All-Time High

Exceeding Q2 top and bottom line expectations, the momentum in Celestica stock looks like a buying opportunity after CLS spiked +16% in today’s trading session and hit a new all-time high of $208 a share.

Appeasing investors, Celestica’s strong Q2 results were driven by high demand for its communications and enterprise hardware products, which are heavily sought after by hyperscale clients investing in AI cloud infrastructure.

Celestica’s Q2 sales came in at $2.89 billion, spiking 21% from $2.39 billion a year ago and comfortably surpassing estimates of $2.67 billion by 8%. More impressive, Celestica’s Q2 earnings soared 53% YoY to $1.39 per share from EPS of $0.91 in the prior period and topped expectations of $1.24 by 12%.

As one of the stock market’s top performers this year, Celestica stock is now up more than +115% in 2025. This comes as CLS shares have rebounded and surged more than +135% in the last three months, which has impressively outpaced the historic recovery among the broader indexes and the Zacks Electronics-Manufacturing Services Market’s +58%.

Exelixis Stock Has Become a Buy-the-Dip Target

With Exelixis' stock falling nearly 17% on Tuesday, the post-earnings drop could very well be a long-term buying opportunity. Able to exceed bottom-line expectations, Exelixis posted Q2 EPS of $0.75, beating the Zacks Consensus of $0.65 by 15% despite dipping from $0.84 a share in the comparative period. This came on sales of $568.26 million, which missed estimates of $578.91 million and was down from $637.18 million in Q2 2024.

Exelixis' mixed Q2 results were attributed to weaker sales for its flagship cancer drug Cabometyx. The company also announced it will be halting its experimental head and neck cancer drug Zanzalintinib, leading to panic selling after citing competitive pressures and lackluster internal data for the stoppage.   

However, Exelixis reaffirmed its full-year revenue guidance of $2.25-$2.35 billion (3-8% growth), which is reason to believe there was an overreaction in the market. Exelixis' stock is now down 5% in 2025 after giving up this year’s gains on Tuesday. That said, EXEL is up more than +80% in the last two years and now trades under $40 a share and at a reasonable 16.6X forward earnings multiple with double-digit EPS growth currently in the forecast for fiscal 2025 and FY26.

Summary

Investors looking for a momentum stock that could be in store for higher highs may want to consider Celestica (CLS), while those looking for a buy-the-dip target have an intriguing option with Exelixis (EXEL). Most importantly, these highly ranked stocks have proven to be very viable investment options thanks to their prominence among the tech and medical sectors, respectively. 

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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