Citigroup (C) Stock Sinks As Market Gains: What You Should Know

Citigroup (C) closed at $42.02 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.4% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 1.6% gain on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 1.34%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 2.26%.

Heading into today, shares of the U.S. bank had lost 18.43% over the past month, lagging the Finance sector's loss of 5.95% and the S&P 500's loss of 5.3% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from C as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be October 13, 2020. In that report, analysts expect C to post earnings of $0.76 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 61.62%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $17.18 billion, down 7.48% from the year-ago period.

Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of $3.10 per share and revenue of $74.34 billion. These totals would mark changes of -59.1% and +0.07%, respectively, from last year.

Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for C. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the company's business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. 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 ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 3.45% lower. C is holding a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell) right now.

Digging into valuation, C currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 13.6. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 13.11, which means C is trading at a premium to the group.

We can also see that C currently has a PEG ratio of 1.3. 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. The Banks - Major Regional industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 2.09 as of yesterday's close.

The Banks - Major Regional industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 204, which puts it in the bottom 20% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual 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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