NOC bounce in progressThe Setup
Northrop Grumman has made a support trend line since 2013, and it now looks to be bouncing from that line after approaching it Friday. NOC also has support at 287 from recent lows. More importantly, NOC has a positive news catalyst after announcing a $2 billion buyback program this morning.
Value
NOC is a pretty compelling value. I estimate forward P/E at 11 and forward P/S at 1.25, pretty good for a company with earnings growth. Sales are growing about 3% per year and earnings about 4% per year. NOC also offers a dividend yield over 2% and growing at a rate of 3% per year. It has 3 patens per billion dollars of market cap, which isn't an extraordinary amount of patents, but it's enough to show that the company is innovating. Perhaps most compelling metric is that NOC has about 41% upside to its median valuation of the past 4 years.
Sentiment
Sentiment on NOC is mixed, with an average 72.25/100 score from S&P Global, but only a middling analyst summary score and ESG rating. Recent earnings revisions have been mixed, and TradingView's technical analysis shows "Strong Sell" on the daily and "Sell" on the weekly. Options interest has been positive, with both open interest and 30-day average volume in bullish territory. The most impressive sentiment metric is the average analyst price target, some 35% above the current price. Although sentiment isn't yet clearly bullish, I believe that it will soon shift in a bullish direction in response to news of the buyback program. My plan is to front-run the change in sentiment, though another possible strategy is to enter on a bullish breakout above the recent resistance trend line.
Price Target
I think a reasonable near-term price target is $340/share.
