Veritiv (VRTV) closed the most recent trading day at $118.82, moving -1.85% from the previous trading session. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.76% loss on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.76%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 10.92%.

Prior to today's trading, shares of the distributor of packaging and printing supplies had lost 9.32% over the past month. This has lagged the Basic Materials sector's gain of 7.22% and the S&P 500's gain of 2.18% in that time.

Veritiv will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect Veritiv to post earnings of $5.44 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 48.23%.

It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Veritiv. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. Veritiv currently has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).

Digging into valuation, Veritiv currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 7.21. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 7.21, which means Veritiv is trading at a no noticeable deviation to the group.

We can also see that VRTV currently has a PEG ratio of 0.46. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. VRTV's industry had an average PEG ratio of 0.68 as of yesterday's close.

The Paper and Related Products industry is part of the Basic Materials sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 14, which puts it in the top 6% 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 follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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