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Bear of the Day: USG Corporation (USG)

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USG Corporation (USG - Free Report) is the $4.6 billion maker of construction wallboard with its iconic, ubiquitous brand Sheetrock, which just celebrated its 100th birthday earlier this year.

But the stock has struggled this year on the back of declining earnings estimates and it's back in the cellar of the Zacks Rank.

And this follows a strong 2016 which saw the company revenues "trough" and bounce back while USG shares more than doubled from $16 to $34 between January 2016 and February 2017.

The recovery in sales was not matched by one in earnings though. Below is the Zacks proprietary Price & Consensus chart which plots changes in annual EPS estimates against the stock price...



As you can see, annual EPS estimates for both 2017 (blue line) and 2018 (gold line) have been on the decline all of this year.

This pessimism about future growth took USG shares back down to $26, but they've since seen a run back up to near the recent 52-week highs.

And right now, consensus sales estimates for 2017 have fallen back too. The current top line haul for this year is expected to be just $3.14 billion vs last year's $3.47 billion, for a 9.6% drop.

So while the economy is strong and real estate seems to be in high gear, this doesn't seem like a good time to be starting or adding to USG positions at 20X earnings.

Investors should at least wait until the estimates stop going down and start heading back up.

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