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Dollar General (DG) Stock Moves -0.6%: What You Should Know

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Dollar General (DG - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $99.74, moving -0.6% from the previous trading session. This move was narrower than the S&P 500's daily loss of 2.06%. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 1.81%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 2.99%.

Coming into today, shares of the discount retailer had lost 4.62% in the past month. In that same time, the Retail-Wholesale sector lost 5.47%, while the S&P 500 lost 6.47%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from DG as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be March 21, 2019. On that day, DG is projected to report earnings of $1.87 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 26.35%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $6.60 billion, up 7.66% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $6.01 per share and revenue of $25.57 billion, which would represent changes of +33.85% and +8.96%, respectively, from the prior year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for DG. 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.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 1.64% lower. DG is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that DG has a Forward P/E ratio of 16.69 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 17.35, so we one might conclude that DG is trading at a discount comparatively.

We can also see that DG currently has a PEG ratio of 1.17. 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. Retail - Discount Stores stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.39 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Retail - Discount Stores industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 185, putting it in the bottom 28% 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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