Baidu Inc. (BIDU) ended the recent trading session at $103.99, demonstrating a -3.55% change from the preceding day's closing price. The stock's change was less than the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.01%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.14%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq decreased by 0.46%.
Coming into today, shares of the web search company had lost 17% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector lost 2.57%, while the S&P 500 lost 1.4%.
The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Baidu Inc. in its upcoming release. The company is predicted to post an EPS of $2.13, indicating a 12.11% growth compared to the equivalent quarter last year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $5.03 billion, indicating a 10.05% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates project earnings of $8.22 per share and a revenue of $20.09 billion, demonstrating changes of +7.59% and +11%, respectively, from the preceding year.
Investors should also take note of any recent adjustments to analyst estimates for Baidu Inc. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Empirical research indicates that these revisions in estimates have a direct correlation with impending stock price performance. 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, ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), possesses a remarkable history of outdoing, externally audited, with #1 stocks returning an average annual gain of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has remained steady. At present, Baidu Inc. boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Looking at valuation, Baidu Inc. is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 13.12. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 14.42, which means Baidu Inc. is trading at a discount to the group.
We can additionally observe that BIDU currently boasts a PEG ratio of 1.52. 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. BIDU's industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.52 as of yesterday's close.
The Internet - Services industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 167, this industry ranks in the bottom 32% of all industries, numbering over 250.
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.
You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.
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Baidu, Inc. (BIDU): Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).