Ross Stores (ROST) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

ROST

In the latest trading session, Ross Stores (ROST - Free Report) closed at $83.20, marking a +1.99% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.85%. At the same time, the Dow added 1.15%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.77%.

Coming into today, shares of the discount retailer had lost 5.07% in the past month. In that same time, the Retail-Wholesale sector lost 9.73%, while the S&P 500 lost 9.35%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from ROST as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be March 5, 2019. In that report, analysts expect ROST to post earnings of $1.13 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 15.31%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $4.06 billion, down 0.26% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $4.19 per share and revenue of $14.93 billion, which would represent changes of +25.45% and +5.61%, respectively, from the prior year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for ROST. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. ROST currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, ROST is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 19.48. This valuation marks a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 17.91.

We can also see that ROST currently has a PEG ratio of 1.95. 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. ROST's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.43 as of yesterday's close.

The Retail - Discount Stores industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 188, which puts it in the bottom 27% 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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