Occidental Petroleum (OXY) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know

Occidental Petroleum (OXY) closed the most recent trading day at $46.56, moving +1.44% from the previous trading session. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.7%. Elsewhere, the Dow gained 0.29%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.04%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the oil and gas exploration and production company had gained 20% over the past month. This has outpaced the Oils-Energy sector's gain of 5.52% and the S&P 500's gain of 4.38% in that time.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from OXY as it approaches its next earnings report date. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.13, down 89.34% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $6.31 billion, up 31.32% from the year-ago period.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for OXY should also be noted by investors. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 4.32% lower within the past month. OXY is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that OXY has a Forward P/E ratio of 35.04 right now. This represents a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 19.76.

Investors should also note that OXY has a PEG ratio of 7.01 right now. 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. OXY's industry had an average PEG ratio of 3.11 as of yesterday's close.

The Oil and Gas - Integrated - United States industry is part of the Oils-Energy sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 65, putting it in the top 26% 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.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.

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