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Chicago, IL – May 30, 2025 – Zacks Equity Research shares Newmont NEM as the Bull of the Day and Caesars Entertainment CZR as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Comstock Resources, Inc. CRK, Energy Transfer LP ET and EQT Corporation EQT.
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks.
Colorado-based Newmont is one of the world's largest producers of gold, owning several active mines in Nevada, Peru, Australia, and Ghana.
The stock sports the highly coveted Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), with EPS expectations moving higher across the board over recent months.
In addition to a favorable EPS outlook, the stock resides in the Zacks Mining – Gold industry, which is currently ranked among the top 7% of all Zacks industries. Let’s take a closer look at the company.
The surge in gold prices has been a driving factor behind the stock’s strong YTD performance, up more than 40%. The favorable environment has been reflected by recent quarterly results, with the company crushing our consensus sales and EPS expectations in the most recent release.
Importantly, the average gold price per oz reached $2,944 throughout the above-mentioned period, melting higher from the $2,090 mark in the same period last year. Free cash flow of $1.2 billion throughout the period also reflected a Q1 record, adding to the positivity.
Shares could be of interest to those with an appetite for income as well, currently yielding 1.9% annually compared to a 1.3% yield from the S&P 500. NEM has already delivered $1.0 billion in total returns to shareholders through share repurchases and dividend payments since the start of the year.
Investors can implement a stellar strategy to find expected winners by taking advantage of the Zacks Rank – one of the most powerful market tools that provides a massive edge.
The top 5% of all stocks receive the highly coveted Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). These stocks should outperform the market more than any other rank.
Newmont is currently a Zack Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Caesars Entertainment, a diversified gaming and hospitality company, generates revenue through gaming operations, including mobile, online gaming, and sports betting. It also utilizes its hotels, restaurants, bars, entertainment, racing, sportsbook offerings, retail shops, and other services to attract customers to its properties.
Analysts have dialed back their earnings expectations across the board, landing the stock into an unfavorable Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).
Let’s take a closer look at how it presently stacks up.
Ceasars Entertainment
CZR shares have struggled so far in 2025, down roughly 18% and widely underperforming relative to the S&P 500. Quarterly results haven’t been strong overall relative to our consensus expectations, with the company falling short of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate by an average of 67% across its last four releases.
Muted sales growth has also been a driving force behind the poor share performance over recent years, as shown below. Sales of $2.9 billion in its latest period grew by a modest 1.9% YoY, which followed negative growth rates in each of the prior three periods.
Nonetheless, the company remains positive, with Bret Yunker, CFO, stating –
“We continue to expect 2025 to benefit from meaningfully lower year-over-year capital expenditures and cash interest expense. When combined with strong operating fundamentals, free cash flow this year will show a significant improvement. Accelerating free cash flow in 2025 will allow us to continue to reduce debt alongside opportunistic share repurchases during market dislocations. To that end, we repurchased $100 million of our shares during April at an average price of $23.84 per share.”
Negative earnings estimate revisions, resulting from soft quarterly results, paint a challenging picture for the company’s shares in the near term.
Caesars Entertainment is a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), indicating that analysts have taken a bearish stance on the company’s earnings outlook.
For those seeking strong stocks, the best idea would be to focus on stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) – these stocks sport a notably stronger earnings outlook paired with the potential to deliver explosive gains in the near term.
There has been a mounting clean energy demand that drives investors’ interest in natural gas stocks. This is because natural gas produces lower emissions than crude oil and coal, while generating an equivalent amount of energy. The rising clean energy demand is also aiding the pricing environment of natural gas, bolstering the outlook of energy players that are engaged in producing, transporting and storing the commodity. Given the backdrop, is this the ideal time to invest in upstream players like Comstock Resources, Inc. and Energy Transfer LP?
In its latest short-term energy outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) forecasted this year's natural gas spot price at $4.10 per million BTU, significantly higher than $2.20 in the past year. Rising exports of LNG from the United States primarily contributed to the commodity prices. The electric power sector also requires more natural gas, aiding the pricing environment.
In its first-quarter 2025 earnings transcript, upstream company EQT Corporation highlighted the resilience of natural gas demand. EQT noted that during the coronavirus pandemic, industrial usage of natural gas slipped by less than 1 billion cubic feet per day, representing a dip of under 1% of the nation's total natural gas consumption. Natural gas’s resilience, which EQT mentioned, was possibly due to the commodity’s wide usage starting from heating homes, cooking and producing electricity.
With the commodity’s pricing environment remaining favorable and natural gas demand staying resilient, upstream energy companies will have incentives to ramp up exploration and production of natural gas to capitalize on the increasing demand for cleaner fossil fuels. With higher production, there will be greater demand for transportation and storage assets of midstream players.
Hence, it would be ideal for investors to bet on prospective natural gas producers and midstream players involved in transporting and storing the commodity. Here are two such stocks – CRK and ET – carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Being a leading producer of natural gas, Comstock Resources is well-positioned to capitalize on the favorable pricing scenario of the commodity. Importantly, CRK has plenty of places left to drill for natural gas, spreading evenly across two prolific underground zones – Haynesville and Bossier. At the speed they’re drilling now, they’ve got enough future wells lined up to keep them busy for more than three decades.
Energy Transfer stands to benefit significantly from the rapid expansion of energy-hungry data centers across Texas, driven by explosive demand for artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and digital services. ET in its first-quarter 2025 earnings transcript mentioned that it is in active discussions with roughly 150 data centers and has already secured a natural gas supply agreement with CloudBurst, a flagship AI-focused data center project. This early traction highlights the partnership’s strong competitive position in meeting the next wave of electricity demand.
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Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index.Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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