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American Tower (AMT) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, American Tower (AMT - Free Report) closed at $258.40, marking a +1.1% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 1.06% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 1.05%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.4%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the wireless communications infrastructure company had lost 2.58% over the past month. This has was narrower than the Finance sector's loss of 9.62% and the S&P 500's loss of 8.3% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from American Tower as it approaches its next earnings release. The company is expected to report EPS of $2.59, up 7.02% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $2.65 billion, up 15.23% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $9.90 per share and revenue of $10.67 billion. These totals would mark changes of +2.59% and +14.08%, respectively, from last year.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for American Tower. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.45% lower. American Tower is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Looking at its valuation, American Tower is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 25.83. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 12.74.

We can also see that AMT currently has a PEG ratio of 2.44. 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. REIT and Equity Trust - Other stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 2.34 based on yesterday's closing prices.

The REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry is part of the Finance sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 137, putting it in the bottom 46% 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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