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Square (SQ) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Square (SQ - Free Report) closed at $65.88, marking a -0.96% move from the previous day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.33% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.44%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.01%.

Coming into today, shares of the mobile payments services provider had lost 1.13% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector lost 1.56%, while the S&P 500 gained 0.89%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from SQ as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be February 26, 2019. In that report, analysts expect SQ to post earnings of $0.13 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 62.5%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $910.57 million, up 47.81% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $0.46 per share and revenue of $3.26 billion. These totals would mark changes of +70.37% and +47.4%, respectively, from last year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for SQ should also be noted by investors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

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.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 53.85% higher. SQ is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, SQ currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 144.09. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 52.8.

Also, we should mention that SQ has a PEG ratio of 5.76. 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. SQ's industry had an average PEG ratio of 2.96 as of yesterday's close.

The Internet - Software industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 31, which puts it in the top 12% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual 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.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.


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