Astrazeneca (AZN) Advances While Market Declines: Some Information for Investors

Astrazeneca (AZN) closed at $188.42 in the latest trading session, marking a +2.74% move from the prior day. The stock's change was more than the S&P 500's daily loss of 1.67%. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a drop of 1.73%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw a decrease of 2.15%.

Coming into today, shares of the pharmaceutical had lost 10.09% in the past month. In that same time, the Medical sector lost 7.36%, while the S&P 500 lost 6.15%.

The investment community will be closely monitoring the performance of Astrazeneca in its forthcoming earnings report. The company's upcoming EPS is projected at $2.5, signifying a 0.81% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Simultaneously, our latest consensus estimate expects the revenue to be $14.81 billion, showing a 9.02% escalation compared to the year-ago quarter.

For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $10.31 per share and a revenue of $62.86 billion, signifying shifts of +12.55% and +7.01%, respectively, from the last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Astrazeneca should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, stretching from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has a noteworthy track record of outperforming, validated by third-party audits, with stocks rated #1 producing an average annual return of +25% since the year 1988. Over the past month, there's been a 0.31% rise in the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. Astrazeneca presently features a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, Astrazeneca currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 17.78. This indicates a premium in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 17.76.

One should further note that AZN currently holds a PEG ratio of 1.38. 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. The Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.52 as of yesterday's close.

The Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 148, finds itself in the bottom 40% echelons of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the vigor of our specific industry groups by computing the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks incorporated in the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Be sure to use Zacks.com to monitor all these stock-influencing metrics, and more, throughout the forthcoming trading sessions.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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