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Gilead Sciences (GILD) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Gilead Sciences (GILD - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $66.17, moving +0.44% from the previous trading session. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.26% gain on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.13%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.4%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the HIV and hepatitis C drugmaker had gained 2.76% over the past month. This has outpaced the Medical sector's gain of 0.32% and lagged the S&P 500's gain of 3.92% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from GILD as it approaches its next earnings report date. In that report, analysts expect GILD to post earnings of $1.76 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 4.35%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $5.62 billion, up 0.36% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $7.04 per share and revenue of $22.33 billion, which would represent changes of +5.55% and +0.91%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for GILD. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 0.06% higher. GILD currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, GILD currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 9.36. This represents a discount compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 26.68.

We can also see that GILD currently has a PEG ratio of 2.96. 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 Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.73 as of yesterday's close.

The Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 88, which puts it in the top 35% 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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