American Express (AXP) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know

This story originally appeared on Zacks

American Express (AXP) closed at $194.54 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.43% move from the prior day. This change outpaced the S&P 500’s 0.24% loss on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 0.49%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, lost 0.04%.

Heading into today, shares of the credit card issuer and global payments company had gained 9.4% over the past month, outpacing the Finance sector’s gain of 0.89% and the S&P 500’s gain of 0.73% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from American Express as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $2.41, down 12.04% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $11.64 billion, up 28.4% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $9.72 per share and revenue of $50.01 billion. These totals would mark changes of -2.99% and +18.01%, respectively, from last year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for American Express. 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. 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.

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 has moved 0.07% higher. American Express currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, American Express currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 19.93. This represents a premium compared to its industry’s average Forward P/E of 12.38.

Investors should also note that AXP has a PEG ratio of 1.71 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. AXP’s industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.83 as of yesterday’s close.

The Financial – Miscellaneous Services industry is part of the Finance sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 65, putting it in the top 26% 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.

Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.

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