Back to top

Image: Bigstock

USA Technologies (USAT) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

Read MoreHide Full Article

In the latest trading session, USA Technologies closed at $5.91, marking a +1.9% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.86% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 0.06%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 1.37%.

Heading into today, shares of the electronic payment and wireless networking company had gained 47.21% over the past month, outpacing the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 6.94% and the S&P 500's gain of 8.11% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from USAT as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be February 14, 2019. In that report, analysts expect USAT to post earnings of $0.04 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 100%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $42.96 million, up 32.15% from the year-ago period.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for USAT. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-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. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

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 remained stagnant. USAT is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Digging into valuation, USAT currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 35.15. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 9.89, so we one might conclude that USAT is trading at a premium comparatively.

The Computer - Integrated Systems industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 46, putting it in the top 18% 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.

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

Published in