Strength Seen in Amgen (AMGN): Can Its 5.7% Jump Turn into More Strength?

AMGN LGND

Amgen (AMGN - Free Report) shares rallied 5.7% in the last trading session to close at $245.44. This move can be attributable to notable volume with a higher number of shares being traded than in a typical session. This compares to the stock's 2.3% loss over the past four weeks.

Share prices likely rose after the analysts at Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock’s recommendation to “Overweight” from Equal Weight. The analysts expect the company’s pipeline drug AMG133 to have a blockbuster potential after it exhibited a strong impact on weight following a single dose administration.

This world's largest biotech drugmaker is expected to post quarterly earnings of $4.51 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -3.4%. Revenues are expected to be $6.59 billion, down 1.7% from the year-ago quarter.

Earnings and revenue growth expectations certainly give a good sense of the potential strength in a stock, but empirical research shows that trends in earnings estimate revisions are strongly correlated with near-term stock price movements.

For Amgen, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. And a stock's price usually doesn't keep moving higher in the absence of any trend in earnings estimate revisions. So, make sure to keep an eye on AMGN going forward to see if this recent jump can turn into more strength down the road.

The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>

Amgen belongs to the Zacks Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry. Another stock from the same industry, Ligand Pharmaceuticals (LGND - Free Report) , closed the last trading session 0.3% higher at $92.71. Over the past month, LGND has returned -2.6%.

For Ligand, the consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $0.45. This represents a change of -71.5% from what the company reported a year ago. Ligand currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

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