Gap (GPS) Showing Unusual Social Activity Today
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 Gap as such a stock due to the following factors:
- GPS has more that 20x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 24.39 mentions/day.
- GPS has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $232.3 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 GPS:
The Gap, Inc. operates as an apparel retail company worldwide. It provides apparel, accessories, and personal care products for men, women, and children under the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime, Athleta, and Intermix brands. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 2.2%. GPS has a PE ratio of 15.1. Currently there are 7 analysts that rate Gap a buy, 1 analyst rates it a sell, and 16 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Gap has been 3.9 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Gap has a market cap of $17.8 billion and is part of the services sector and retail industry. The stock has a beta of 1.30 and a short float of 4.1% with 1.78 days to cover. Shares are down 0.2% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.
Analysis:
rates Gap as a
. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, notable return on equity, attractive valuation levels and growth in earnings per share. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had lackluster performance in the stock itself.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- GPS's revenue growth trails the industry average of 13.5%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 2.9%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, improving the earnings per share.
- The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.45, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels.
- The return on equity has improved slightly when compared to the same quarter one year prior. This can be construed as a modest strength in the organization. When compared to other companies in the Specialty Retail industry and the overall market, GAP INC's return on equity exceeds that of the industry average and significantly exceeds that of the S&P 500.
- GAP INC has improved earnings per share by 10.3% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, GAP INC increased its bottom line by earning $2.88 versus $2.75 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($3.00 versus $2.88).
- You can view the full Gap Ratings Report.
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