Colgate-Palmolive (CL) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

Colgate-Palmolive (CL) closed the most recent trading day at $74.04, moving +0.16% from the previous trading session. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.22%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.13%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.22%.

Coming into today, shares of the consumer products maker had lost 1.45% in the past month. In that same time, the Consumer Staples sector lost 9.21%, while the S&P 500 lost 10.02%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Colgate-Palmolive as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect Colgate-Palmolive to post earnings of $0.71 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 11.25%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $4.39 billion, up 2.95% from the year-ago period.

CL's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $3.05 per share and revenue of $18 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of -4.98% and +3.33%, respectively.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Colgate-Palmolive should also be noted by investors. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. Colgate-Palmolive is holding a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell) right now.

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that Colgate-Palmolive has a Forward P/E ratio of 24.25 right now. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 22.64.

We can also see that CL currently has a PEG ratio of 5. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. CL's industry had an average PEG ratio of 3.74 as of yesterday's close.

The Soap and Cleaning Materials industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 198, putting it in the bottom 22% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

To follow CL in the coming trading sessions, be sure to utilize Zacks.com.

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