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Albemarle (ALB) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Albemarle (ALB - Free Report) closed at $217.47, marking a +1.6% move from the previous day. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.75%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 1.05%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 7.84%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the specialty chemicals company had lost 23% over the past month. This has lagged the Basic Materials sector's loss of 0.18% and the S&P 500's loss of 4.4% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from Albemarle as it approaches its next earnings report date. On that day, Albemarle is projected to report earnings of $7.69 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 661.39%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $2.6 billion, up 191.03% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $21.02 per share and revenue of $7.43 billion. These totals would mark changes of +420.3% and +123.31%, respectively, from last year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Albemarle. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for 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, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. Albemarle is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, Albemarle currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 10.18. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 9.8.

We can also see that ALB currently has a PEG ratio of 0.64. 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. Chemical - Diversified stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.92 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Chemical - Diversified industry is part of the Basic Materials sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 175, which puts it in the bottom 31% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual 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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