Strength Seen in Provident Financial (PFS): Can Its 5.7% Jump Turn into More Strength?
Provident Financial (PFS) shares rallied 5.7% in the last trading session to close at $15.95. This move can be attributable to notable volume with a higher number of shares being traded than in a typical session. This compares to the stock's 10.7% gain over the past four weeks.
Provident Financial witness a strong price increase driven by optimism surrounding the company’s effort to strengthen its Healthcare Lending team. The company intends to expand sales efforts for Middle Market Healthcare Services with the appointment of a new leadership role.
This holding company for The Provident Bank is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.14 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -68.9%. Revenues are expected to be $130.85 million, up 10.4% 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 Provident 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 PFS 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 >>>>
Provident Financial belongs to the Zacks Financial - Savings and Loan industry. Another stock from the same industry, BankFinancial (BFIN), closed the last trading session 4% higher at $10.50. Over the past month, BFIN has returned 2.5%.
BankFinancial's consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $0.17. Compared to the company's year-ago EPS, this represents a change of -5.6%. BankFinancial currently boasts a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).
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Provident Financial Services, Inc (PFS) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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