Financial Accounting Blog

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Growth stocks on the cheap... Trolling for bargains after the market's rally -- 4 stocks to consider now.

Given the strength of the recent stock market rebound, you might expect that there would be few bargains left lying around.
There are lots of ways to evaluate stock prices, of course. And growth investors should be looking at a stock's price relative to its total return potential rather than sizing it up based on assets or breakup value.

To find such underpriced growth stocks, I like to scan blue chips, looking for companies whose total return potential (based on earnings growth and dividend yield) is actually higher than the P/E. A stock with a P/E of 13 would be cheap by this measure if its earnings growth was 12 percent and the stock paid a 2 percent dividend yield (total return potential can be gauged by adding a stock's projected earnings growth rate to its dividend yield).