Howmet Aerospace Inc. HWM shares ended the last trading session 3.1% higher at $115.78. The jump came on an impressive volume with a higher-than-average number of shares changing hands in the session. This compares to the stock's 9.7% loss over the past four weeks.

Howmet’s rally is largely driven by optimism over its strong momentum in the commercial aerospace market, driven by robust build rates and wide-body aircraft recovery. The company is also witnessing strength in its defense aerospace business on the back of rising U.S. & international defense budgets.

This maker of engineered products for the aerospace and other industries is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.77 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +35.1%. Revenues are expected to be $1.93 billion, up 5.9% 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 Howmet, 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 HWM 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 >>>>

Howmet belongs to the Zacks Aerospace - Defense industry. Another stock from the same industry, Northrop Grumman (NOC), closed the last trading session 0.8% lower at $481.57. Over the past month, NOC has returned -0.2%.

Northrop Grumman's consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $6.33. Compared to the company's year-ago EPS, this represents a change of +0.2%. Northrop Grumman currently boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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