2 Strong Buy Stocks to Consider Before Earnings: Movado (MOV) and Nutanix (NTNX)

With earnings season winding down, Movado Group MOV) and Nutanix NTNX) stand out as two highly ranked stocks worth watching ahead of their quarterly reports this week.

Both stocks currently sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), reflecting favorable earnings estimate revisions, and are scheduled to report on Wednesday, August 26.

Movado's Earnings Rebound and Lofty Dividend

Movado, one of the world’s premier watchmakers, will report its Q2 results before the market opens on Wednesday. The Zacks Consensus is calling for quarterly EPS of $0.36, which would be an impressive 56% year-over-year increase, with Q2 revenue expected to be up over 1% to $164.18 million.

The luxury watchmaker is coming off an encouraging Q1 in which sales increased 8% YoY to $142.4 million, adjusted EPS surged to $0.32 from $0.08 a year ago, and gross margin expanded 320 basis points to 57.3%. Movado also finished Q1 with $225.3 million in cash and no long-term debt, giving the company considerable financial flexibility. 

Reflecting its strong Q1 results and improving outlook, MOV has been one of the market’s better performers, with shares surging more than 60% year to date.

Income investors have another reason to take notice. Movado recently raised its quarterly dividend 14% to $0.40 per share, or $1.60 annually. That equates to a lofty dividend yield of roughly 4.6%, with MOV trading at around $34 a share and at a reasonable 18X forward earnings multiple.

Nutanix's Double-Digit Cloud Growth

Nutanix will release results for its fiscal fourth quarter after the closing bell on Wednesday. The innovative tech company provides an enterprise cloud platform that combines compute, storage, virtualization, and networking into one integrated solution.

Q4 EPS is expected at $0.48, representing nearly 30% growth from the prior-year quarter, while revenue is projected to rise roughly 13% to $737.89 million. The Zacks Consensus also calls for full-year EPS of $1.93, up 19%, on more than 11% revenue growth to $2.83 billion.

Nutanix's recurring-revenue momentum remains particularly attractive. Fiscal Q3 annual recurring revenue (ARR) climbed 15% YoY to $2.43 billion, while quarterly revenue rose 10% and non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 22.3% from 21.5%. Management subsequently raised its fiscal 2026 outlook to $2.82-$2.84 billion in revenue and $760-$780 million in free cash flow.

Wall Street will be looking for more of the same Wednesday, as Q4 ARR is expected to reach roughly $2.51 billion, compared with $2.22 billion a year ago.

Adding to Nutanix’s growth story is rising enterprise AI spending, with its hybrid-cloud infrastructure increasingly being used to deploy and manage GPU-powered generative and agentic AI workloads.

That expanding opportunity is helping justify NTNX’s 30X forward earnings multiple, with shares trading above $60 and up around 30% YTD to handily outperform many of its IT-services peers.

Bottom Line

Movado and Nutanix offer two different but attractive growth stories heading into earnings. NTNX provides exposure to durable hybrid-cloud and recurring-revenue growth, while MOV combines a sharp earnings recovery with a compelling dividend yield and a virtually debt-free balance sheet.

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

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