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Macy's (M) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

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Macy's (M - Free Report) closed at $4.44 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.23% move from the prior day. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 2.28%. At the same time, the Dow added 2.24%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 1.72%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the department store operator had lost 65.01% over the past month. This has lagged the Retail-Wholesale sector's loss of 10% and the S&P 500's loss of 16.08% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from M as it approaches its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect M to post earnings of -$0.60 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 236.36%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $4.88 billion, down 11.26% from the year-ago period.

M's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $1.13 per share and revenue of $22.76 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of -61.17% and -7.31%, respectively.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for M should also be noted by investors. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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 has moved 54.73% lower. M is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, M currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 3.93. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 4.91, so we one might conclude that M is trading at a discount comparatively.

We can also see that M currently has a PEG ratio of 0.33. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. Retail - Regional Department Stores stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 0.47 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Retail - Regional Department Stores industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 245, putting it in the bottom 4% 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.


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