What's In Store For Merck (MRK) This Earnings Season?
Zacks Investment Research | Apr 25, 2017 11:13PM ET
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) will be reporting first-quarter 2017 earnings on May 2, before market opens. Last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 1.14%.
Merck’s performance has been pretty impressive, with the company exceeding earnings expectations consistently. The average positive earnings surprise over the last four quarters is 4.03%
Merck’s shares rose 5.8% this year so far compared with 5.3% for the Zacks classified Earnings ESP Filter .
Zacks Rank: Merck’s Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings beat.
We caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.
Stocks to Consider
Stocks in the pharma sector that have both a positive ESP and a favorable Zacks Rank are:
Proteostasis Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTI) , which is expected to release results on May 12, has an Earnings ESP of +5.17% and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here .
Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) with an Earnings ESP of +2.33% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is scheduled to release results on Apr 26.
Scheduled to release results on May 2, Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD) has an Earnings ESP of +2.77% and a Zacks Rank #3.
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