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Western Digital (WDC) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Western Digital (WDC - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $56.53, moving +1.82% from the previous trading session. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.91% gain on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.7%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.02%.

Coming into today, shares of the maker of hard drives for businesses and personal computers had lost 10.84% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector lost 2.58%, while the S&P 500 lost 2.74%.

WDC will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. On that day, WDC is projected to report earnings of $0.27 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 91.12%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $3.90 billion, down 22.39% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $3.04 per share and revenue of $16.56 billion. These totals would mark changes of -37.19% and -0.06%, respectively, from last year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for WDC. 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. 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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. WDC is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, WDC currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 18.25. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 18.25, which means WDC is trading at a no noticeable deviation to the group.

Investors should also note that WDC has a PEG ratio of 9.13 right now. 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 Computer- Storage Devices was holding an average PEG ratio of 3.61 at yesterday's closing price.

The Computer- Storage Devices industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 46, which puts it in the top 19% 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.

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


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