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Ulta Beauty (ULTA) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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Ulta Beauty (ULTA - Free Report) closed at $243.97 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.83% move from the prior day. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.16%. Meanwhile, the Dow 0%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.26%.

Heading into today, shares of the beauty products retailer had lost 1.87% over the past month, lagging the Retail-Wholesale sector's gain of 2.09% and the S&P 500's gain of 4.12% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from ULTA as it approaches its next earnings release, which is expected to be December 5, 2019. In that report, analysts expect ULTA to post earnings of $2.15 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 1.38%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $1.69 billion, up 8.46% from the year-ago period.

ULTA's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $11.96 per share and revenue of $7.40 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +10.23% and +10.19%, respectively.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for ULTA. 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.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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 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 remained stagnant. ULTA is holding a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell) right now.

Looking at its valuation, ULTA is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 20.24. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 11.39, so we one might conclude that ULTA is trading at a premium comparatively.

Also, we should mention that ULTA has a PEG ratio of 1.21. 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. ULTA's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.61 as of yesterday's close.

The Retail - Miscellaneous industry is part of the Retail-Wholesale sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 182, putting it in the bottom 29% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our 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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