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American Tower (AMT) Dips More Than Broader Markets: What You Should Know

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American Tower (AMT - Free Report) closed at $190.05 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.47% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.47% loss on the day. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.72%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 5.08%.

Heading into today, shares of the wireless communications infrastructure company had lost 0.3% over the past month, lagging the Finance sector's gain of 4.09% and the S&P 500's gain of 5.36% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from American Tower as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect American Tower to post earnings of $2.36 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 8.88%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $2.73 billion, up 2.23% from the year-ago period.

AMT's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $9.66 per share and revenue of $11.01 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of -1.02% and +2.75%, respectively.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for American Tower. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. American Tower is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that American Tower has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.96 right now. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 11.68.

Meanwhile, AMT's PEG ratio is currently 1.28. 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. The REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 2.09 as of yesterday's close.

The REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 172, which puts it in the bottom 32% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. 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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