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First National Corp. (FXNC) shares ended the last trading session 5.4% higher at $20.21. 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 12.6% loss over the past four weeks.
First National Corp shares rallied sharply, benefiting from broad market strength following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day suspension on tariffs for non-retaliating countries. The policy shift eased trade tensions and improved market sentiment, fueling a sharp uptick in FXNC shares.
This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.53 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +3.9%. Revenues are expected to be $21.5 million, up 44.3% 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 First National, 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 FXNC 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 >>>>
First National belongs to the Zacks Banks - Southeast industry. Another stock from the same industry, Hilltop Holdings (HTH), closed the last trading session 3.4% higher at $29.18. Over the past month, HTH has returned -6.5%.
For Hilltop Holdings , the consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $0.28. This represents a change of -33.3% from what the company reported a year ago. Hilltop Holdings currently has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).