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Cross Country Healthcare (CCRN) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Cross Country Healthcare (CCRN - Free Report) closed at $26.54 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.63% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.75%. At the same time, the Dow added 1.05%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 7.84%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the provider of health care staffing and workforce management services had lost 24.6% over the past month. This has lagged the Business Services sector's loss of 4.15% and the S&P 500's loss of 4.4% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from Cross Country Healthcare as it approaches its next earnings release. On that day, Cross Country Healthcare is projected to report earnings of $0.90 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 35.71%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $594.17 million, down 7.26% from the prior-year quarter.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $5.07 per share and revenue of $2.77 billion, which would represent changes of +65.69% and +65.36%, respectively, from the prior year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for Cross Country Healthcare should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. Cross Country Healthcare is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Investors should also note Cross Country Healthcare's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 5.32. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 10.84, which means Cross Country Healthcare is trading at a discount to the group.

We can also see that CCRN currently has a PEG ratio of 0.89. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Staffing Firms was holding an average PEG ratio of 0.97 at yesterday's closing price.

The Staffing Firms industry is part of the Business Services sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 175, which puts it in the bottom 31% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our 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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