Apache Corporation (APA): Stock With Unusual Social Activity
Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.
Trade-Ideas LLC identified
(
) as an unusual social activity candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Apache Corporation as such a stock due to the following factors:
- APA has more that 20x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 11.58 mentions/day.
- APA has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $279.1 million.
Identifying stocks with 'Unusual Social Activity' tends to be a valuable process for traders looking to capitalize on the 'talk of the town' stocks that are basking in far more attention from the StockTwits financial community than normal. Good press? Bad press? It ultimately doesn't matter if it's good or bad if you know how to trade around the sentiment. Certain hedge funds use such data for their proprietary algorithms and it is not uncommon to see shared social sentiment play itself out in a stock's price trend.
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More details on APA:
Apache Corporation, an independent energy company, explores for, develops, and produces natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Currently there are 7 analysts that rate Apache Corporation a buy, 1 analyst rates it a sell, and 13 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Apache Corporation has been 5.0 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Apache has a market cap of $24.8 billion and is part of the basic materials sector and energy industry. The stock has a beta of 0.72 and a short float of 2.1% with 2.00 days to cover. Shares are up 6.5% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.
Analysis:
rates Apache Corporation as a
. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in its earnings per share.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed when compared to that of the S&P 500 and the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry. The net income has significantly decreased by 2866.7% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, falling from $174.00 million to -$4,814.00 million.
- Return on equity has greatly decreased when compared to its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a signal of major weakness within the corporation. Compared to other companies in the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry and the overall market, APACHE CORP's return on equity significantly trails that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.
- Net operating cash flow has decreased to $1,933.00 million or 21.96% when compared to the same quarter last year. In conjunction, when comparing current results to the industry average, APACHE CORP has marginally lower results.
- The share price of APACHE CORP has not done very well: it is down 17.64% and has underperformed the S&P 500, in part reflecting the company's sharply declining earnings per share when compared to the year-earlier quarter. The fact that the stock is now selling for less than others in its industry in relation to its current earnings is not reason enough to justify a buy rating at this time.
- APACHE CORP has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. The company has reported a trend of declining earnings per share over the past two years. However, the consensus estimate suggests that this trend should reverse in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, APACHE CORP swung to a loss, reporting -$13.07 versus $5.95 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings (-$1.32 versus -$13.07).
- You can view the full Apache Corporation Ratings Report.
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