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Montage Resources (MR) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

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In the latest trading session, Montage Resources closed at $6.09, marking a +1.67% move from the previous day. The stock outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.39%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 1.11%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 1.65%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the independent oil and gas company had gained 157.08% over the past month. This has outpaced the Oils-Energy sector's gain of 35.29% and the S&P 500's gain of 25.31% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from MR as it approaches its next earnings release, which is expected to be May 7, 2020. On that day, MR is projected to report earnings of $0.16 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 77.14%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $145.65 million, up 2.93% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of -$0.42 per share and revenue of $541.81 million, which would represent changes of -116.47% and -14.6%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for MR. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. 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.

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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. MR currently has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).

Digging into valuation, MR currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 3.99. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 9.68, which means MR is trading at a discount to the group.

The Oil and Gas - Exploration and Production - United States industry is part of the Oils-Energy sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 148, which puts it in the bottom 42% 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.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.

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