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Cintas (CTAS) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Cintas (CTAS - Free Report) closed at $180.77, marking a -0.6% move from the previous day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.65%. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.79%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.01%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the uniform rental company had lost 7.23% over the past month. This has was narrower than the Industrial Products sector's loss of 13.06% and lagged the S&P 500's loss of 6.82% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from CTAS as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be December 20, 2018. In that report, analysts expect CTAS to post earnings of $1.72 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 31.3%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $1.70 billion, up 5.54% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $7.24 per share and revenue of $6.84 billion. These totals would mark changes of +21.89% and +5.66%, respectively, from last year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for CTAS. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. 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. 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, 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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.23% higher. CTAS is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that CTAS has a Forward P/E ratio of 25.1 right now. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 21.31, which means CTAS is trading at a premium to the group.

Meanwhile, CTAS's PEG ratio is currently 2.09. 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 Uniform and Related industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.62 as of yesterday's close.

The Uniform and Related industry is part of the Industrial Products sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 106, putting it in the top 42% 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.

Make sure to utilize Zacks. Com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.


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