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United Natural Foods (UNFI) shares rallied 7.6% in the last trading session to close at $30.57. This move can be attributable to notable volume with a higher number of shares being traded than in a typical session. This compares to the stock's 17.3% gain over the past four weeks.

United Natural stock is rising surrounding optimism about its wholesale segment, stemming from new business from both existing and newly acquired customers, along with the effects of inflation. Focus on lean management, operational efficiency and growing natural and organic food segment, is further driving its upward momentum.

This organic and specialty foods distributor is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.23 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +130%. Revenues are expected to be $7.82 billion, up 4.2% 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 United Natural, 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 UNFI 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 >>>>

United Natural is a member of the Zacks Food - Miscellaneous industry. One other stock in the same industry, Campbell's (CPB), finished the last trading session 1.9% higher at $34.96. CPB has returned -6.9% over the past month.

For Campbell, the consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at $0.65. This represents a change of -13.3% from what the company reported a year ago. Campbell currently has a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.