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Primoris Services and Clorox have been highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – July 21, 2025 – Zacks Equity Research shares Primoris Services Corp. (PRIM - Free Report) as the Bull of the Day and The Clorox Company (CLX - Free Report) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) , Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) and Apple (AAPL - Free Report) .

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks.

Bull of the Day:

The U.S. is kicking off a multi-trillion-dollar, multi-decade infrastructure spending boom across energy, utilities, AI data centers, and beyond that’s become one of the most dominant trends on Wall Street.

Primoris Services Corp. stock is a top long-term buy-and-hold candidate and Monday’s Bull of the Day due to its ability to grow alongside the energy and utility infrastructure spending boom, spurred by the artificial intelligence arms race.

PRIM shares have already soared over 430% in the past five years to outpace its highly-ranked Building Products-Heavy Construction space (top 2% of 245 Zacks industries) and crush the S&P 500's 95%.

Despite the charge, which is part of a longer outperformance, Primoris Services trades at a solid discount to both the benchmark and its peers.

The engineering, construction, and maintenance contractor is poised to surpass its early 2025 highs. Primoris Services is also projected to post solid double-digit earnings growth going forward, and its earnings revisions have surged to help it land a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

PRIM Stock’s Energy and AI Infrastructure Growth Upside

Primoris is a specialty contractor that provides engineering, construction, and maintenance services for critical infrastructure across utilities, energy, renewables, and beyond throughout North America.

PRIM grew its revenue from under $500 million in 2009 to $6.4 billion in 2024, including 22% average sales growth in the past three years. The company posted strong earnings expansion during this period, including a surge over the past two years.

PRIM operates across two core segments, Utilities and Energy, working to build and maintain everything from transmission, distribution, substations, and communication networks to natural gas plants and infrastructure, battery storage systems, and beyond. The company works with major public utilities, energy companies, oil and gas firms, solar developers, telecom providers, data center operators, and more.

The Dallas, Texas-headquartered firm closed the first quarter of 2025 with a $11.4 billion backlog. “We continue to see elevated levels of demand for our infrastructure services, particularly in meeting the utility and power generation needs of North America…”

"The need to support increased electrification of industry, further investments in manufacturing, and the construction of facilities to support emerging technologies provides significant opportunities,” interim CEO David King said in prepared Q1 remarks.

The AI-Boosted Infrastructure Spending Boom

Big Tech capex is set to hit $250 billion in 2025 alone, with Microsoft set to spend $80 billion on AI Data centers just year. Generative AI platforms use 10X more energy compared to a Google search, with some data centers consuming the same amount of electricity as a midsize city.

Goldman Sachs forecasted earlier this year that global power demand from AI data centers will surge 50% by 2027 and by as much as 165% by the end of the decade.

This backdrop is why the U.S. is racing to expand the nuclear energy industry, increase natural gas supply, and build out electricity infrastructure. Energy utilities capex is projected to reach all-time highs between 2025 and 2027.

The U.S. federal government and technology giants like Microsoft and Meta are attempting to jumpstart the energy and infrastructure spending spree to help support rapid AI growth, reshoring, including cutting-edge semiconductor plants construction, and beyond.

Compounding megatrends across technology, energy, deglobalization, and more create a potential once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for investors to ride the wide-ranging infrastructure spending spree.

PRIM’s Growth Outlook and Other Bullish Signals

Primoris benefits directly from these secular spending trends across energy and utilities after years of underinvestment. The company grew its revenue by 11% in 2024, after averaging 28% sales growth in 2023 and 2022. PRIM is projected to grow its sales by roughly 7% in 2025 and 2026 to reach $7.24 billion next year.

Primoris is projected to grow its adjusted earnings by 16% in FY25 and 14% in FY26, following 37% EPS expansion last year.

The energy infrastructure standout crushed our EPS estimates by an average of 45% in the past four quarters, and its upbeat bottom-line revisions have earned it a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Its Most Accurate EPS estimate came in 7% above consensus for 2026, signaling ongoing momentum.

The stock has gained more attention from Wall Street, climbing from four brokerage recommendations in late 2024 to 10 today. Better yet, nine of PRIM’s 10 brokerage recommendations are “Strong Buys.” The company also pays a dividend.

Time for Long-Term Investors and Traders to Buy PRIM

PRIM soared 190% in the past two years to blow away its highly-ranked industry’s 114%. This is part of a 1,100% charge in the past 15 years to top the Building Products - Heavy Construction industry’s 860% and the S&P 500’s 490%.

It’s worth flagging again that the company’s Building Products-Heavy Construction area lands in the top 2% of 245 Zacks industries. This is important because studies have shown that roughly half of a stock's price movement can be attributed to its industry. Plus, the top 50% of Zacks Ranked Industries outperforms the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.

Primoris stock is on the verge of overtaking its January highs, which could push it into a new trading range.

Buying PRIM ahead of a potential breakout is more enticing considering its impressive value compared to its peers, itself, and the S&P 500. The stock trades at a 13% discount to its highs, 11% vs. its industry, and 16% below the benchmark at 19.1X forward 12-month earnings.

Bear of the Day:

The Clorox Company stock has tanked since the middle of 2020, after its massive, but ultimately unsustainable surge at the start of COVID-19.

The maker of disinfectant wipes and beyond has seen its earnings outlook fade again recently, and its revenue is projected to dip in FY25 and FY26.

Why Investors Might Want to Stay Away from Clorox Stock

Clorox’s portfolio includes its namesake disinfectant wipes and other household and heavy-duty cleaning items such as Pine-Sol. On top of that, the firm’s portfolio features everything from Kingsford charcoal and Brita water filters to Hidden Valley, Burt’s Bees, and beyond.

Clorox breaks up its business into four categories: Health and Wellness (Cleaning; Professional Products), Household (Bags and Wraps; Cat Litter; Grilling), Lifestyle (Food; Natural Personal Care; Water Filtration), and International (Sales Outside the U.S.). CLX had posted rather steady sales growth for much of the last 20 years, until recently.

The household products standout saw its revenue slip in two out of the past three years as it came up against an unsustainable stretch of Covid-boosted sales expansion. Worse still, its GAAP earnings fell off a cliff between its FY21 and FY23. On top of that, the entire Consumer Staples sector has lagged far behind the S&P 500 over the past decade.

Clorox missed our Q3 FY25 (period ended on Mar. 31) earnings estimate by 8% and its downbeat EPS guidance lands it a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). “Heightened macroeconomic uncertainties drove changes in shopping behaviors, resulting in temporary category slowdowns and lower sales. We expect these slowdowns to persist in the fourth quarter, as reflected in our updated outlook,” CEO Linda Rendle said in prepared remarks.

Clorox’s adjusted earnings are projected to climb 15% in FY25. But its Q1 FY26 EPS is set to dive 19% YoY, with its full-year 2026 earnings expected to fall over 8%.

CLX stock has fallen roughly 45% over the last five years, including a 20% drop in 2025. The stock is trying to hold its ground near its 10-year lows. But it might be best to at least stay away from Clorox until it reports its Q4 FY25 results on July 31 and offers updated guidance.

Additional content:

Steady Transition to Windows 11 Aids MSFT: What's the Path Forward?

Microsoft continues to dominate the desktop operating system market through Windows. The ongoing transition to Windows 11 from Windows 10 has been a major driver, boosting enterprise adoption. This, along with pent-up demand from an aging installed base, helped drive up global PC shipments in the second quarter of 2025. which rose 6.5% year over year to 68.4 million shipments, per IDC’s latest data.

PC vendors rushed to push high shipment volumes into the United States ahead of potentially higher tariffs. Lenovo led the PC shipment market with 24.8% share, followed by HP and Dell Technologies with 20.7% and 14.3% share, respectively. All three companies offer devices powered by Windows. As enterprises prepare for the end-of-support for Windows 10 in 2025, Windows 11 commercial deployments have witnessed a 75% year-over-year surge in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, showing strong enterprise-led PC upgrades.

Microsoft has rolled out Copilot+ PCs, its latest AI-optimized Windows devices, which come bundled with exclusive features like Recall, Click to Do and a revamped Windows search, providing a more sophisticated device experience. The company has collaborated with Adobe, Canva and Zoom to integrate AI applications that improve user engagement. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, Microsoft expects revenues from its More Personal Computing segment to range between $12.35 billion and $12.85 billion.

Our model estimate for MSFT’s fourth-quarter 2025 More Personal Computing revenues is $12 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 1%.

MSFT Faces Stiff Competition

Microsoft faces tough competition from Alphabet’s and Apple’s robust operating systems.

Alphabet’s ChromeOS has evolved into a secure, AI-focused operating system, with the flagship Chromebook Plus offering a 12-month AI pro plan, built-in Gemini, and features like Select to Search, Text Capture and the Quick insert key. The company recently launched Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, powered by Alphabet’s on-device machine learning capabilities with features like smart grouping, AI image editing and generative wallpapers, further reinforcing ChromeOS as a sophisticated operating system in today’s dynamic tech landscape.

Apple has been gaining share in the PC market, thanks to strong demand for the latest Mac devices powered by the M4 family of chips — M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max. The iPhone-maker launched MacBook Pro that featured these latest chips on Oct. 30, 2024, and MacBook Air on March 5, 2025. The company also recently announced macOS Tahoe 26. Apple is now expected to launch M5 chip-powered MacBooks this fall, which is likely to further drive Mac shipment volume.

MSFT’s Share Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

MSFT shares have appreciated 21.3% in the year-to-date period, outperforming the Zacks Computer – Software industry and the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s growth of 19.6% and 9.6%, respectively.

From a valuation standpoint, MSFT stock is currently trading at a forward 12-month Price/Sales ratio of 12.04X compared with the industry’s 8.97X. MSFT has a Value Score of D.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for MSFT’s fiscal 2025 earnings is pegged at $13.34 per share, up by a cent over the past 30 days. The estimate indicates 13.05% year-over-year growth.

Microsoft Corporation price-consensus-chart | Microsoft Corporation Quote

Microsoft currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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