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Chicago, IL – September 12, 2025 – Zacks Equity Research shares Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. STRL as the Bull of the Day and Ashland Inc. ASH as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Intel Corp. INTC, NVIDIA Corp. NVDA and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks.
Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. is seeing big growth from its data center business. This Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) is expected to grow earnings by 56.9% this year.
Sterling is an engineering and construction firm with a market cap of $9.2 billion. It operates in three segments: E-Infrastructure, Transportation and Building Solutions in the United States. Sterling focuses on the Southern, Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Rocky Mountain regions as well as the Pacific Islands.
E-Infrastructure includes data centers, manufacturing, warehouses and distribution centers. Transportation Solutions includes infrastructure and rehabilitation projects for highways, roads, bridges, airports, ports, rail and storm drainage systems.
Building Solutions includes residential and commercial concrete foundation solutions including single family and multi-family homes and parking structures.
On Sep 2, 2025, Sterling announced it had completed its acquisition of Irving, Texas-based CEC Facilities Group, LLC. CEC is a specialty electrical and mechanical contractor.
The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Sterling in the remainder of calendar year 2025.
It will add revenue of approximately $130 to $138 million and earnings per share of $0.22 to $0.24.
This acquisition will expand the company’s E-Infrastructure capabilities at a time of strong demand for distribution and data centers.
Now that the deal has closed and Sterling has given an idea of the impact, it’s not a surprise that the analysts are raising their earnings estimates to get in line with the new guidance.
2 estimates were raised in the last month for 2025. It has pushed up the 2025 Zacks Consensus Estimate to $9.57 from $9.41.
That is earnings growth of 56.9% as Sterling only made $6.10 last year.
1 estimate was also revised higher for 2026 in the last month. The 2026 Zacks Consensus Estimate has also moved higher, to $10.98 from $10.65. That’s another 14.7% earnings growth.
On Aug 4, 2025, Sterling reported its second quarter results which beat on the Zacks Consensus for the 10th quarter in a row.
It was a record quarter with revenue up 21% to $614.5 million. E-Infrastructure, which includes the data center business, jumped 29% while Transportation Solutions was up 24%. Building Solutions remained soft as the housing market remains challenged.
Gross profit margins jumped to 23.3%, a new high for the company, from 19.3% a year ago.
Sterling had a $2 billion backlog, up 24% compared to the prior year second quarter.
Shares of Sterling have been on fire in 2025. It has jumped 88.3% which is outperforming the AI Revolution leader, NVIDIA, which has gained 28.1% year-to-date.
Sterling is no longer a “cheap” stock, but it is attractive given its growth. It has a forward P/E of 31.5 and a PEG ratio of 2.1. A PEG ratio under 1.0 usually indicates value but 2.1 is not stretched.
If you are looking for an infrastructure stock for the AI Revolution, Sterling should be on your short list.
[In full disclosure, Tracey owns Sterling in her own personal portfolio.]
Ashland Inc. is navigating the uncertain macroeconomic environment. This Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) is expected to see earnings decline 18.9% in fiscal 2025.
Ashland is a global additives and specialty ingredients company with a market cap of $2.4 billion. It serves customers in more than 100 countries in a wide range of markets including architectural coatings, construction, energy, food and beverage, personal care and pharmaceutical.
On July 29, 2025, Ashland reported its fiscal third quarter 2025 results and missed on the Zacks Consensus Estimate by $0.11. Earnings were $1.04 versus the consensus of $1.15.
It was the second earnings miss in a row.
Sales fell 15% to $463 million year-over-year. Sales were impacted by previously announced portfolio optimization which reduced overall sales by approximately $53 million, or 10%, versus the prior year quarter. Excluding those initiatives, sales declined 5%.
There were stable demand trends across most markets, though volumes fell short of expectations as anticipated growth did not materialize.
All four of its main segments saw falling sales. Life Sciences sales fell 17% to $162 million. Personal Care sank 16% to $147 million. Specialty Additives retreated 13% to $131 million while Intermediates sales declined 8% to $33 million.
In July 2025, Ashland updated its full-year fiscal 2025 outlook to reflect the current environment, which was a stable but subdued macroeconomic environment and continued caution across customer channels.
Demand trends in each of the company’s segments remain mixed. Pharmaceuticals continue to recover and show resilience. Personal Care was stable while Specialty Additives and Intermediates remained under pressure.
In better news, the company is benefitting from FX tailwinds and from a $30 million restructuring program which is expected to generate about $7.5 million in savings in the fourth quarter.
Analysts are bearish. 4 estimates were cut for fiscal 2025 in the last 60 days. That has pushed the Zacks Consensus Estimate down to $3.61 from $3.77 during that time.
That is an earnings decline of 18.9% as Ashland made $4.45 last year.
Analysts are gloomy on fiscal 2026 as well. 4 estimates were cut in the last 2 months. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2026 has fallen to $4.39 from $4.71 in the last 60 days.
However, that’s earnings growth of 21.4% as it’s considerably higher than this year’s expected earnings.
Shares of Ashland are weak this year, having fallen 21.2% year-to-date. That is well under the S&P 500, which is up 12.5% during the same time.
Is Ashland a deal?
It trades with a forward P/E of 14.7. A P/E of 15 or less usually means a company has value.
But it has a PEG ratio, which measures P/E over growth, of 3.8. A cheap PEG ratio is 1.0 or under so Ashland is not cheap by this metric.
Ashland pays a dividend for your patience, currently yielding 3.1%.
Investors looking at the chemical companies, like Ashland, might want to stay on the sidelines until the earnings estimates turn around.
Intel Corp. recently announced that its GPU systems have successfully achieved MLPerf v5.1 benchmark requirements. MLPerf Inference v5.1 is the newest release of an industry-standard AI benchmarking suite. The benchmark measures how quickly a system can run AI models across multiple workloads.
During the process, Intel’s Xeon 6 processors with P-cores and Arc Pro B-Series GPUs demonstrated their ability to deliver powerful, low-latency AI inference for workstations and edge systems. The Xeon 6 processors with P-cores achieved 1.9x performance improvement compared to previous generations. The Arc Pro B60 showcased better performance than RTX Pro 6000 and L40S of NVIDIA Corp.
The results indicate that the CPUs remain a vital component in AI systems, and Intel’s strong foundation in the CPU domain is a major advantage. Intel’s leading edge GPU system coupled with its Xeon 6 CPU offer professionals a more accessible and affordable options for AI deployments. The all-in-one platform integrates full-stack hardware and software engineered to meet the need for advanced AI inference systems and simplify AI adoption.
Per a report from Grand View Research, the global AI inference market, which is estimated at $97.24 billion in 2024, is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 17.5% from 2025 to 2030. Intel is steadily advancing its portfolio to capitalize on this market trend.
In the AI inference hardware space, Intel faces stiff competition from Advanced Micro Devices and NVIDIA. NVIDIA’s Blackwell Ultra Class GPUs have showcased impressive performance across all the newly added benchmarks in MLPerf Inference v5.1. This result underscores NVIDIA’s leadership in the AI inference market. NVDA is positioning its product line for its AI factory setup for managing a large volume of AI workloads, while INTC is emphasizing workstations and edge systems where cost efficiency and ease of use are prioritized by professionals.
AMD also intends to close its gap with NVIDIA in the AI inference domain. AMD MI355X, an advanced GPU designed to support AI and high-performance computing, demonstrated 2.7x performance improvement compared to the previous generation MI325X during the MLPerf v5.1 benchmark results.
Intel has gained 27.3% over the past year compared with the industry’s growth of 44.2%.
Going by the price/book ratio, the company's shares currently trade at 1.03 book value, lower than 36.63 of the industry average.
Intel’s earnings estimates for 2025 and 2026 have declined over the past 60 days.
Intel stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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