Albemarle (ALB) Gains But Lags Market: What You Should Know

Albemarle (ALB) closed at $60.46 in the latest trading session, marking a +0.73% move from the prior day. The stock lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 6.24%. At the same time, the Dow added 6.38%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 5.6%.

Heading into today, shares of the specialty chemicals company had lost 29.92% over the past month, lagging the Basic Materials sector's loss of 22.34% and the S&P 500's loss of 21.22% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from ALB as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.89, down 27.64% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $783.83 million, down 5.8% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $4.82 per share and revenue of $3.46 billion, which would represent changes of -20.2% and -3.5%, respectively, from the prior year.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for ALB. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for 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.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 1.36% lower. ALB is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Digging into valuation, ALB currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 12.45. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 11.29, which means ALB is trading at a premium to the group.

Also, we should mention that ALB has a PEG ratio of 1.31. 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. ALB's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.46 as of yesterday's close.

The Chemical - Diversified industry is part of the Basic Materials sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 238, which puts it in the bottom 7% 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.