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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B - Free Report) closed at $195.20 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.85% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 3.43% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 3.29%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 4.26%.

Coming into today, shares of the company had lost 7.84% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector lost 10.39%, while the S&P 500 lost 12.15%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from BRK.B as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be February 22, 2019. In that report, analysts expect BRK.B to post earnings of $2.36 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 74.81%.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for BRK.B. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest 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. 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. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.81% lower within the past month. BRK.B currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, BRK.B currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 18.7. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 11.87, so we one might conclude that BRK.B is trading at a premium comparatively.

We can also see that BRK.B currently has a PEG ratio of 2.67. 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. The Insurance - Property and Casualty was holding an average PEG ratio of 1.05 at yesterday's closing price.

The Insurance - Property and Casualty industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 172, which puts it in the bottom 33% 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.


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