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Applied Materials (AMAT) Stock Moves -0.23%: What You Should Know

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Applied Materials (AMAT - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $61.17, moving -0.23% from the previous trading session. This change lagged the S&P 500's daily of 0%. At the same time, the Dow added 0.08%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.18%.

Heading into today, shares of the maker of chipmaking equipment had gained 5.18% over the past month, outpacing the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 4.19% and the S&P 500's gain of 3.37% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from AMAT as it approaches its next earnings report date. On that day, AMAT is projected to report earnings of $0.92 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 13.58%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $4.10 billion, up 9.26% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $3.77 per share and revenue of $16.65 billion, which would represent changes of +24.01% and +13.98%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for AMAT. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. 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 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. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. AMAT is currently a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Digging into valuation, AMAT currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 16.25. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 25.41, so we one might conclude that AMAT is trading at a discount comparatively.

We can also see that AMAT currently has a PEG ratio of 1.98. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. AMAT's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.98 as of yesterday's close.

The Semiconductor Equipment - Wafer Fabrication industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 2, putting it in the top 1% 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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