CPE

As some investors may believe the market is starting to show "signs of recovery", many of the over 200 institutional firms The Applied Finance Group (AFG) works with can always take advantage of identifying mispriced securities. While some of AFG’s clients might have a specific focus on growth or value, most subscribe to the practice of buying growth at a discount (growth at a reasonable price GARP) and avoiding  “value traps.”

In October 2008 AFG released the study, Then and Now, discussing the low expectations priced into the market "Today many world-class franchises are available at expectations reflecting a very bearish future. Over 150 companies in the S&P 500 (industrials) have negative sales growth expectations embedded into their current market valuations". Following that study AFG issued another study, Analyzing Market Troughs and Rebounds, which pointed out that historical market recoveries have been typically dominated by value stocks.

Whether you are looking for value or more growth oriented securities, we have provided a list of  companies in various asset classes, Large Cap Growth, Large Cap Value, Small Cap Growth, Small Cap Value that are currently on AFG’s Buy and Sell list. If you are a professional investor and would like to view a complete buy and sell list or take a trial of AFG's valuation tools CLICK HERE.

Monthly Buy/Sell list Across the Market
The Applied Finance Group has a disciplined approach for identifying companies that are expected to outperform and underperform the market by using proprietary metrics and measurements that have been tested and proven through time. Because AFG’s research is fundamentally derived, AFG’s quantitative analysis spans across growth and value stocks, all sectors, industries, and market caps with over 4,500 covered securities. By using AFG’s proprietary criteria, AFG publishes a monthly buy/sell list to provide clients with a refined focused list as a starting point for all investments. This focus List of stocks has outperformed the market on an annual basis by greater than 10% with our buy portfolio and underperformed the market by 10% with our sell portfolio. AFG clients then use Value Expectations to further analyze the expectations embedded in a security’s price (example of expectations embedded in the entire S&P500 over the next 5 years below) and to build out their own model to refine an intrinsic value of a company based on their own expectations.

Select Companies From AFG's Current Monthly Buy-Sell List

(Source: The Applied Finance Group)

Again, If you are a professional investor and would like to view a complete buy and sell list or take a trial of AFG's valuation tools CLICK HERE.

Model Portfolio Buy/Sell Results

To view how AFG defines the Large/Small and Growth/Value universe Click Here.

A brief description of some other of AFG's insights:

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).

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 their cost of capital.

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.

The following table contains the two cheapest companies in the Russell 2000 from each sector based on The Applied Finance Group’s Recommendation and Value Score (explained below). All of the companies listed below are the most attractive in their sector based on AFG Recommendation, which factors in each companies Economic Margin, Intrinsic Value, and Management Quality Score. All companies listed also had the highest Value Score (upside) relative to their sector peers. Also provided is a VE analysis of each company to identify implied sales growth expectations versus what the company has delivered historically in sales growth over the past 5 years. Measuring the spread between a company’s VE sales growth expectations and what it has historically delivered should give you a good idea of which companies have the best chance of meeting or exceeding those expectations, and thus are more likely to outperform.

Given that the stock market has lost a tremendous amount of value over the past year, it is important to point out the market cap for the companies in the table. The twenty-two companies shown below have returned -53% on average over the past year vs. -33% for the Russell 2000 Index as a whole. Specifically, a few companies now maintain a market cap that some investors may define as micro caps. If micro caps are within your universe of focus, then the following table can help identify some gems to invest in, especially since micro caps (as well as small caps) have outperformed large cap stocks by about 10% since the market bottomed on March 9, 2009. However, if the “bigger” small caps are more to your liking, the table provides a good snap shot for several companies with respectable size that may outperform the Russell 2000, based on Value Score and imbedded expectations.

Cheapest Companies In The Russell 2000 By Sector (excluding Financials)

A brief description of AFG's buy criteria variables is below:

• 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 their cost of capital.

• Intrinsic Value/Value Score – A company's percentile ranking based on AFG’s modified discounted cash flow model to measure the intrinsic value of a firm compared to its peers.

• Management Quality – Assess management’s ability to make wealth creating decisions.

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

*AFG’s Value Expectations allows us to understand the Sales Growth, EBITDA Margin, and Asset Turnover a company has to deliver in the future to justify its current trading price. In theory and in normal circumstances, if the imbedded future performance is very conservative relative to the company’s historical performance, the stock is regarded as undervalued. The table displays the implied future Sales Growth of the list of companies assuming their EBITDA Margins and Asset Turnovers stay at the 5 year median levels.