Lowe's (LOW) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

Lowe's (LOW) closed at $97.03 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.61% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.48%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.53%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.8%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the home improvement retailer had gained 9.11% over the past month. This has outpaced the Retail-Wholesale sector's loss of 0.3% and the S&P 500's loss of 2.09% in that time.

LOW will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release, which is expected to be February 27, 2019. In that report, analysts expect LOW to post earnings of $0.80 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 8.11%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $15.73 billion, up 1.55% from the prior-year quarter.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $5.11 per share and revenue of $71.40 billion, which would represent changes of +16.4% and +4.05%, respectively, from the prior year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for LOW. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.07% higher. LOW is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

Digging into valuation, LOW currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.09. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 10.97.

Also, we should mention that LOW has a PEG ratio of 1.35. 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. The Building Products - Retail was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.04 at yesterday's closing price.

The Building Products - Retail industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 205, putting it in the bottom 20% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order 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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