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Altria (MO) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Altria (MO - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $47.49, moving +1.06% from the previous trading session. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.02%.

Heading into today, shares of the owner of Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker had lost 0.93% over the past month, outpacing the Consumer Staples sector's loss of 1.56% and lagging the S&P 500's gain of 3.01% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from MO as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be July 29, 2021. In that report, analysts expect MO to post earnings of $1.17 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 7.34%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $5.38 billion, up 6.2% from the year-ago period.

MO's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $4.58 per share and revenue of $21.24 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +5.05% and +1.91%, respectively.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for MO. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an 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. MO is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, MO is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 10.26. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 11.5, which means MO is trading at a discount to the group.

Investors should also note that MO has a PEG ratio of 2.56 right now. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. Tobacco stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 1.92 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The Tobacco industry is part of the Consumer Staples sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 110, which puts it in the top 44% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual 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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