AMSG

Many of the institutional clients of The Applied Finance Group, Ltd. (AFG) tend to focus on large cap stocks and benchmark themselves against the S&P 500 Index, which is why many of the buy ideas from ValueExpectations.com usually come from the large cap index. Earlier in the week we highlighted companies from our buy/sell list both from large and small cap, as well as from growth and value style universes. We thought it would be a good follow up for some of the investors we work with who focus on small and mid cap stocks, to provide a more thorough list of companies from the Russell 2000 Index.

Below is a summary of 20 companies to watch from the Russell 2000 Index. The table highlights the 2 companies from each sector (ex. Financials) that have the most attractive Value Score (above 80) and are currently rated Neutral or higher by AFG’s buy/sell criteria. Factors used to derive an AFG recommendation include: Expected change in Economic Margins, Intrinsic Value, and Management Quality. Many classify stocks with market capitalization under $250 million as micro caps, therefore only those companies within the index that met that market cap minimum were considered for the list.

Russell 2000 - Stocks to Watch (above $250 million, ex financials)

What do we use to measure corporate performance and calculate an intrinsic value:
AFG’s Economic Margin - A corporate performance measurement that addresses the gaps in GAAP, eliminating distortions caused by accounting policies to measure what a company is truly earning above or below its cost of capital. Our Economic Margin Framework encompasses a valuation system that explicitly addresses the four main value drivers of enterprise value: profitability, competition, growth, and cost of capital.
AFG's Valuation Metric – Measures the percent to target (deviation between a stock’s current trading price and its AFG current default target price). To derive the intrinsic value of a firm, AFG uses its proprietary Valuation Model (modified discounted cash flow model).
Management Quality – Assesses management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.
AFG's Value Universe - Companies in the AFG universe, which have MV/IC at the bottom 50% of the universe and have EPS estimates.

Normally when searching for buy ideas, AFG narrows its list of potential investment opportunities using several powerful proprietary variables including valuation, economic margin, management quality, earnings quality and others. Using AFG’s valuation variable (value score) as a stand-alone screen, ValueExpectations has shown portfolios that have gone on to earn outstanding returns. We first posted a blog “High Value Score Stocks: S&P 500” in December of 2008 using only AFG's valuation variable - Value Score. These companies (DDS, S, NOV, MTW, SII, WFR, CHK) were identified as having the highest value score within the entire index. Since release, that portfolio has outpaced the S&P 500 by over 71% as of May 26, 2009.

With the success of the first high value score stocks blog, we released a second portfolio in a blog posted on May 7, 2009.  This portfolio consists of S&P 500 High Value Score stocks (as of May 7, 2009) and so far it has been outperforming the S&P 500 (performance results will be released in our next performance update blog in a few weeks).

Due to user feedback, we decided to release a list of the top 15 value score stocks from the Russell 2000.

Top 15 AFG Value Score Companies - Russell 2000 (ex. Financials)

An attractive default AFG valuation is a great place to start when looking for potential investments as our valuation techniques have proven successful through time at identifying mispriced securities and helping our clients identify investment opportunities resulting in outperforming their chosen benchmark.

Applied Finance Group’s (AFG’s) Value Score defined - Value Score represents the percentile rank of the percent to target (deviation between AFG’s current default target price and stock’s current trading price).   A Value Score of 100 is the most undervalued and 0 is the most overvalued company in the universe.