Taking the lead: Discover Financial Services (DFS)

With 1.25 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 2.36 million shares. The 52-week range on DFS shows that it touched its highest point at $205.76 and its lowest point at $119.95 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $196.85. With its current market cap of 47.34 billion, DFS has annualized dividend of $2.80 while the current yield stands at 1.49%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.14.

Price Performance and Earnings:

Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of DFS was up-trending over the past week, with a rise of 1.48%, but this was up by 27.94% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -5.23% while six-month performance rose 26.74%. The stock gained 51.09% in the past year, while it has gained 8.60% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for DFS yields 18.72 with Next year EPS estimates of 15.89. For the next quarter, that number is 3.48. This implies an EPS growth rate of -18.60% for this year and 10.19% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 0.29% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 14.28%.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 251.63 million DFS shares are outstanding with a float of 250.18 million shares on hand for trading.

Analysts Ratings:

Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for DFS since 12 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 7 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 5 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential.

EPS: Estimates vs Actual

It is also common to use earnings estimates to evaluate a firm’s growth potential and to determine trading strategy. Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of $15.87272 being high and $13.87293 being low. For DFS, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $14.81524.