Esquire Financial Holdings, Inc. (ESQ) shares soared 5.2% in the last trading session to close at $125.67. The move was backed by solid volume with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This compares to the stock's 6.4% gain over the past four weeks.
Esquire Financial Holdings’ shares extended their winning streak to a fourth consecutive trading session yesterday, fueled by growing optimism ahead of the company’s second-quarter earnings release on July 23. Investor sentiment appears to have been supported by expectations of year-over-year growth in both earnings and revenues, favorable analyst estimates, and broader strength across banking stocks.
This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $1.55 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +12.3%. Revenues are expected to be $40.91 million, up 14.2% from the year-ago quarter.
Earnings and revenue growth expectations certainly give a good sense of the potential strength in a stock, but empirical research shows that trends in earnings estimate revisions are strongly correlated with near-term stock price movements.
For Esquire Financial, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. And a stock's price usually doesn't keep moving higher in the absence of any trend in earnings estimate revisions. So, make sure to keep an eye on ESQ going forward to see if this recent jump can turn into more strength down the road.
The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>
Esquire Financial belongs to the Zacks Banks - Northeast industry. Another stock from the same industry, OFG Bancorp (OFG), closed the last trading session 2.4% higher at $51.17. Over the past month, OFG has returned 7.4%.
For OFG, the consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $1.18. This represents a change of +2.6% from what the company reported a year ago. OFG currently has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).
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Esquire Financial Holdings, Inc. (ESQ): Free Stock Analysis Report
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).