American Airlines (AAL) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

American Airlines (AAL) closed at $34.37 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.04% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.16%. Meanwhile, the Dow gained 0.42%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.03%.

Heading into today, shares of the world's largest airline had gained 11.05% over the past month, outpacing the Transportation sector's gain of 4.23% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.89% in that time.

Investors will be hoping for strength from AAL as it approaches its next earnings release, which is expected to be April 26, 2019. In that report, analysts expect AAL to post earnings of $0.52 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 30.67%. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $10.66 billion, up 2.45% from the year-ago period.

AAL's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $5.74 per share and revenue of $46.58 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +26.15% and +4.58%, respectively.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for AAL should also be noted by investors. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.

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. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 3.27% lower. AAL is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that AAL has a Forward P/E ratio of 5.99 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 10.16, so we one might conclude that AAL is trading at a discount comparatively.

Meanwhile, AAL's PEG ratio is currently 1.12. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. AAL's industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.75 as of yesterday's close.

The Transportation - Airline industry is part of the Transportation sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 95, putting it in the top 38% 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.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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