Nucor (NUE) ended the recent trading session at $164.71, demonstrating a +2.25% change from the preceding day's closing price. The stock's performance was ahead of the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.3%. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.86%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.17%.
The steel company's shares have seen an increase of 11.64% over the last month, surpassing the Basic Materials sector's gain of 3.23% and the S&P 500's loss of 0.06%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Nucor in its upcoming release. In that report, analysts expect Nucor to post earnings of $2.06 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 68.85%. Alongside, our most recent consensus estimate is anticipating revenue of $7.77 billion, indicating a 9.77% upward movement from the same quarter last year.
Regarding the entire year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates forecast earnings of $8.03 per share and revenue of $32.49 billion, indicating changes of -9.78% and +5.7%, respectively, compared to the previous year.
It's also important for investors to be aware of any recent modifications to analyst estimates for Nucor. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the business and profitability.
Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. 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.
The Zacks Rank system, ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), possesses a remarkable history of outdoing, externally audited, with #1 stocks returning an average annual gain of +25% since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 3% higher. Nucor currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
In the context of valuation, Nucor is at present trading with a Forward P/E ratio of 20.06. This indicates a premium in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 14.
We can also see that NUE currently has a PEG ratio of 1.18. Comparable to the widely accepted P/E ratio, the PEG ratio also accounts for the company's projected earnings growth. NUE's industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.8 as of yesterday's close.
The Steel - Producers industry is part of the Basic Materials sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 173, which puts it in the bottom 30% of all 250+ industries.
The strength of our individual industry groups is measured by the Zacks Industry Rank, which is calculated based on the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within these groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
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Nucor Corporation (NUE): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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