Alaska Air Group (ALK) closed the most recent trading day at $48.79, moving +2.8% from the previous trading session. The stock's performance was ahead of the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.94%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.75%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 1.52%.
Shares of the airline have depreciated by 11.54% over the course of the past month, underperforming the Transportation sector's loss of 1.61%, and the S&P 500's gain of 1.67%.
Analysts and investors alike will be keeping a close eye on the performance of Alaska Air Group in its upcoming earnings disclosure. In that report, analysts expect Alaska Air Group to post earnings of $1.57 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 38.43%. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $3.66 billion, indicating a 26.26% growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.
Regarding the entire year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates forecast earnings of $3.65 per share and revenue of $14.21 billion, indicating changes of -25.05% and +21.09%, respectively, compared to the previous year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Alaska Air Group. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.
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 past month, there's been no change in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. Alaska Air Group is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.
Looking at valuation, Alaska Air Group is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 13. This denotes a premium relative to the industry average Forward P/E of 9.2.
Also, we should mention that ALK has a PEG ratio of 0.48. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. By the end of yesterday's trading, the Transportation - Airline industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.85.
The Transportation - Airline industry is part of the Transportation sector. Currently, this industry holds a Zacks Industry Rank of 41, positioning it in the top 17% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.
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Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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