The latest trading session saw Blue Bird (BLBD) ending at $34.50, denoting a -1.6% adjustment from its last day's close. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily gain of 1.67%. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 1.07%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 2.5%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the school bus maker had gained 0.95% over the past month. This has outpaced the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector's loss of 6.08% and the S&P 500's loss of 6.57% in that time.

The investment community will be closely monitoring the performance of Blue Bird in its forthcoming earnings report. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.96, up 7.87% from the prior-year quarter. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $390 million, indicating a 12.74% growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.

For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $4 per share and a revenue of $1.45 billion, signifying shifts of +15.61% and +7.92%, respectively, from the last year.

Investors should also pay attention to any latest changes in analyst estimates for Blue Bird. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, upbeat changes in estimates indicate analysts' favorable outlook on the company's business health and profitability.

Our research reveals that these estimate alterations are directly linked with the stock price performance in the near future. 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.

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. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has remained steady. Currently, Blue Bird is carrying a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

With respect to valuation, Blue Bird is currently being traded at a Forward P/E ratio of 8.77. This indicates a discount in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 9.8.

We can additionally observe that BLBD currently boasts a PEG ratio of 0.81. Comparable to the widely accepted P/E ratio, the PEG ratio also accounts for the company's projected earnings growth. As the market closed yesterday, the Automotive - Domestic industry was having an average PEG ratio of 0.81.

The Automotive - Domestic industry is part of the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 208, which puts it in the bottom 17% 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 use Zacks.com to monitor all these stock-influencing metrics, and more, throughout the forthcoming trading sessions.

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

Zacks Investment Research