Are Retail-Wholesale Stocks Lagging BJ's Restaurants (BJRI) This Year?

The Retail-Wholesale group has plenty of great stocks, but investors should always be looking for companies that are outperforming their peers. Is BJ's Restaurants (BJRI) one of those stocks right now? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

BJ's Restaurants is a member of our Retail-Wholesale group, which includes 183 different companies and currently sits at #6 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different sector groups. The average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups is measured, and the sectors are listed from best to worst.

The Zacks Rank is a proven model that highlights a variety of stocks with the right characteristics to outperform the market over the next one to three months. The system emphasizes earnings estimate revisions and favors companies with improving earnings outlooks. BJ's Restaurants is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Over the past 90 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for BJRI's full-year earnings has moved 7.4% higher. This shows that analyst sentiment has improved and the company's earnings outlook is stronger.

Based on the most recent data, BJRI has returned 45.4% so far this year. Meanwhile, stocks in the Retail-Wholesale group have lost about 4.3% on average. This shows that BJ's Restaurants is outperforming its peers so far this year.

Another Retail-Wholesale stock, which has outperformed the sector so far this year, is Starbucks (SBUX). The stock has returned 11.6% year-to-date.

For Starbucks, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year has increased 9.4% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

To break things down more, BJ's Restaurants belongs to the Retail - Restaurants industry, a group that includes 37 individual companies and currently sits at #163 in the Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks in this group have lost about 14.9% so far this year, so BJRI is performing better this group in terms of year-to-date returns. Starbucks is also part of the same industry.

Going forward, investors interested in Retail-Wholesale stocks should continue to pay close attention to BJ's Restaurants and Starbucks as they could maintain their solid performance.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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