Is Consolidated Edison (ED) Stock Outpacing Its Utilities Peers This Year?

Investors interested in Utilities stocks should always be looking to find the best-performing companies in the group. Consolidated Edison (ED) is a stock that can certainly grab the attention of many investors, but do its recent returns compare favorably to the sector as a whole? A quick glance at the company's year-to-date performance in comparison to the rest of the Utilities sector should help us answer this question.

Consolidated Edison is a member of the Utilities sector. This group includes 107 individual stocks and currently holds a Zacks Sector Rank of #6. The Zacks Sector Rank gauges the strength of our 16 individual sector groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups.

The Zacks Rank is a successful stock-picking model that emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions. The system highlights a number of different stocks that could be poised to outperform the broader market over the next one to three months. Consolidated Edison is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Over the past 90 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for ED's full-year earnings has moved 1.5% higher. This signals that analyst sentiment is improving and the stock's earnings outlook is more positive.

Our latest available data shows that ED has returned about 13.3% since the start of the calendar year. Meanwhile, the Utilities sector has returned an average of 11.6% on a year-to-date basis. As we can see, Consolidated Edison is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.

One other Utilities stock that has outperformed the sector so far this year is FirstEnergy (FE). The stock is up 13.5% year-to-date.

For FirstEnergy, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year has increased 0.6% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

To break things down more, Consolidated Edison belongs to the Utility - Electric Power industry, a group that includes 58 individual companies and currently sits at #85 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, this group has gained an average of 12.2% so far this year, meaning that ED is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns. FirstEnergy is also part of the same industry.

Going forward, investors interested in Utilities stocks should continue to pay close attention to Consolidated Edison and FirstEnergy as they could maintain their solid performance.

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

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