AeroVironment (AVAV) closed at $254.81 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.72% move from the prior day. The stock outperformed the S&P 500, which registered a daily gain of 0.32%. At the same time, the Dow added 1.04%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.14%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the maker of unmanned aircrafts had lost 5.08% lagged the Aerospace sector's gain of 3.63% and the S&P 500's gain of 3.08%.
The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of AeroVironment in its upcoming release. On that day, AeroVironment is projected to report earnings of $0.34 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 61.8%. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $453.5 million, indicating a 139.34% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $3.23 per share and revenue of $2 billion, which would represent changes of -1.52% and +144.32%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for AeroVironment. 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 business outlook.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has remained unchanged. AeroVironment presently features a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).
Looking at valuation, AeroVironment is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 77.51. This signifies a premium in comparison to the average Forward P/E of 39.06 for its industry.
The Aerospace – Defense Equipment industry is part of the Aerospace sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 159, putting it in the bottom 36% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank is ordered 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.
