CECO Environmental shares soared 5.9% in the last trading session to close at $8.64. The move was backed by solid volume with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This compares to the stock's 10.7% gain over the past four weeks.

Shares of CECO Environmental jumped after the company posted better-than-anticipated fourth-quarter 2020 results. It experienced sequential growth in bookings, revenues and operating margin in the reported period. In the quarters ahead, the company expects to benefit from its improving end markets, deepened focus on operational costs and a strong execution and backlog level.

Price and Consensus

This maker of air pollution controls and industrial ventilation systems is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.11 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -26.7%. Revenues are expected to be $80.3 million, down 0.2% 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 CECO, 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 CECE 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 >>>>