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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Eli Lilly, Costco, Applied Materials, Illumina and Norfolk Southern Corp

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 1, 2021 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Eli Lilly and Company (LLY - Free Report) , Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST - Free Report) , Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT - Free Report) , Illumina, Inc. (ILMN - Free Report) and Norfolk Southern Corporation (NSC - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:

Top Stock Reports for Eli Lilly, Costco and Applied Materials

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Eli Lilly, Costco, and Applied Materials. These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Shares of Eli Lilly have outperformed the Zacks Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry over the past year (+64.1% vs. +18.3%). The Zacks analyst believes that higher demand for drugs like Trulicity, Taltz, and others have been boosting the company’s revenue growth.

An excellent pipeline for cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's treatments is likely to keep supporting Lilly’s growth through 2025. Generic competition for several drugs, rising pricing pressure in the United States, and price cuts in some international markets remain as some major top-line headwinds though.

(You can read the full research report on Eli Lilly here >>>)

Costco shares have gained +14.7% in the last three months against the Zacks Discount Retail industry’s gain of +2.4%, but things seem to be improving for the tech giant. The Zacks analyst believes that the strategy to sell products at heavily discounted prices has helped it to remain on a growth track as cash-strapped customers continue to depend on Costco as an option for low-cost necessities.

Costco’s net sales increased 17.5% to $61.4 billion during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 — the 16-week period ended Aug 29, 2021 — from $52.3 billion in the last year. Stiff competition from both brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers and cautious consumer spending is likely to hurt Costco's performance in the near term though.

(You can read the full research report on Costco here >>>)

Shares of Applied Materials have gained +49.4% in the year-to-date period against the Zacks Semiconductor Equipment - Wafer Fabrication industry’s gain of +45.7%. The Zacks analyst believes that strength in the 3D NAND market, innovation strategy, and growth in the Chinese market will drive the business.

Increased customer spending in foundry and logic on the back of the ever-growing need for specialty nodes in automotive, power, 5G rollout, IoT, communications and image sensor markets, is a major positive. A high fixed cost structure, slowdown in smartphone market, weak chip demand, and macroeconomic uncertainties are major concerns though.

(You can read the full research report on Applied Materials here >>>)

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Illumina and Norfolk Southern Corp.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release. u

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