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Are Business Services Stocks Lagging COHERENT CORP (COHR) This Year?

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The Business Services group has plenty of great stocks, but investors should always be looking for companies that are outperforming their peers. Has Coherent (COHR - Free Report) been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Coherent is one of 248 individual stocks in the Business Services sector. Collectively, these companies sit at #10 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different groups, measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the sector to gauge the strength of each group.

The Zacks Rank emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find stocks with improving earnings outlooks. This system has a long record of success, and these stocks tend to be on track to beat the market over the next one to three months. Coherent is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Within the past quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for COHR's full-year earnings has moved 15% higher. This signals that analyst sentiment is improving and the stock's earnings outlook is more positive.

Based on the latest available data, COHR has gained about 60.3% so far this year. Meanwhile, the Business Services sector has returned an average of -12.6% on a year-to-date basis. As we can see, Coherent is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.

Another stock in the Business Services sector, Ingram Micro (INGM - Free Report) , has outperformed the sector so far this year. The stock's year-to-date return is 26.4%.

For Ingram Micro, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year has increased 3.6% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

To break things down more, Coherent belongs to the Technology Services industry, a group that includes 122 individual companies and currently sits at #169 in the Zacks Industry Rank. This group has lost an average of 12.1% so far this year, so COHR is performing better in this area. Ingram Micro is also part of the same industry.

Going forward, investors interested in Business Services stocks should continue to pay close attention to Coherent and Ingram Micro as they could maintain their solid performance.

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