Heavy construction company Quanta Services broke out past a buy point Tuesday. That's the reason why Quanta Services is IBD Stock of the Day — again.
Houston-based Quanta is one of the highest-rated stocks in IBD's heavy construction industry group, which has hoisted itself into the top 40 of IBD's 197 group rankings. The company specializes in construction services for utility companies. It also works with renewable-energy providers and other industries.
Quanta stock is part of a broader rally today in heavy construction stocks. The group was up 1.8% Tuesday morning and among the 15 best-performing groups of the day.
The industry rose in sympathy with Constellation Energy and other nuclear-power stocks after the nuclear-power generator announced a 20-year electricity-supply deal with Meta Platforms.
Demand for electricity to power massive data centers is driving demand for power suppliers. That's helped drive Quanta's backlog to a record $35.3 billion.
Quanta Services — which was also the Stock of the Day on May 20 — has a highest-possible Composite Rating of 99.
Since then, Piper Sandler raised the price target to 370 from 360 and kept an overweight rating a week ago. Analysts believe power-transmission capital spending growth will expand. And while other infrastructure services stocks should benefit, Piper singled out Quanta Services as the main beneficiary as the leader on transmission services, TheFly.com reported.
Analysts expect current-quarter earnings to climb 26.5% to $2.40 a share, with sales up 17% to $6.553 billion. Full-year EPS is seen rising 12.6% to $10.10 a share, according to FactSet. This year's sales should grow 14% to $26.981 billion.
Quanta Services Breaks Out
Shares of Quanta Services rose nearly 3% before midday Tuesday, rising past the 348.90 buy point of a cup-with-handle base. The buy zone runs to 366.35.
Volume was merely average Tuesday, at a critical time when it should be at least 40% above average. But the relative strength line is at new highs, according to IBD MarketSurge.
The stock declined as much as 38% from its Jan. 22 peak. While that's deeper than desirable, the stock formed an 8%-deep handle that served as a proper shakeout ahead of Tuesday's breakout.
A Jan. 21 breakout from a risky late-stage base failed. But the deep base that followed helped the stock in another way: It undercut the previous base (from late November to January), which reset the base count.
Quanta stock has a 21-day average true range (ATR) of 2.54%. The average true range is a metric available on IBD's MarketSurge that gauges the characteristic breadth of a stock's behavior. Stocks with a high ATR tend to make large price moves that can trigger sell rules. Stocks with lower ATRs tend to make more incremental moves.
With the S&P 500 and Nasdaq now in a power trend, investors can buy stocks with ATRs up to 8%, though they should be wary of being too concentrated in high-octane names.
