Salesforce.com (CRM) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

Salesforce.com (CRM) closed the most recent trading day at $145.99, moving +0.19% from the previous trading session. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.48% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.53%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.8%.

Coming into today, shares of the customer-management software developer had gained 6.53% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector lost 1.5%, while the S&P 500 lost 2.09%.

CRM will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release, which is expected to be February 27, 2019. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.56, up 60% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $3.56 billion, up 24.92% from the prior-year quarter.

CRM's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $2.61 per share and revenue of $13.24 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +93.33% and +26.3%, respectively.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for CRM. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. CRM is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Looking at its valuation, CRM is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 55.81. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 26.49, which means CRM is trading at a premium to the group.

Meanwhile, CRM's PEG ratio is currently 2.31. 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 Computer - Software was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.88 at yesterday's closing price.

The Computer - Software industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 80, putting it in the top 32% 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.

Make sure to utilize Zacks. Com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.

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