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Bloomberg provides a score for companies within the S&P 500 based on an average of all analyst ratings from the street. Below is a table highlighting companies with the best analyst ratings, largest increase in rating, highest price targets, and worst analyst ratings and the valuation attractiveness of each of these companies based on The Applied Finance Group’s (AFG) valuation model.

Companies within each of these groups are ranked from most attractive from a valuation perspective to the least attractive. VE.com will actively track the performance of these recommendations and see how they stack up to the analyst recommendations in each group. AFGview.com, AFG’s professional investor website allows you to compare any company using their rating versus the consensus ratings of the sell side. If you are interested in an analysis on a specific company, contact afgsales@afgltd.com.

Best/Worst Analyst Rated Companies (Bloomberg)

AFG's Valuation Model – Using AFG’s modified discounted cash flow model to measure the intrinsic value of a firm compared to its peers. AFG's Value Score - 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.

Fortune magazine recently put out an article listing the most admired companies in the world.  We took the top 50 firms (excluding Financials, and companies not traded in the US) on their list and put them through Applied Finance Group's quantitative recommendation framework.  Just because these firms are among the most admired companies in the world does not qualify them as the most attractive investment. Being among the most admired is an honor and means you must be doing something right, but might not necessarily mean the share price is currently attractive. 

The following articles which we have posted in the past on ValueExpectations.com will give you a better understanding of what it takes for management to create wealth, understand Management Quality, and see how EPS alone falls short in estimating a company’s value. There are two main characteristics a company must have in order to be a good investment opportunity: (1) the company needs to be a strong economic performer, (2) the company should be attractively priced.   Many people admired the DeLorean, but it was neither a good performing car nor a good priced car. Below we reveal a few "DeLoreans" after looking under the hood.

Top 50 Most Admired Companies According to Fortune

One would think that $3 million is too much to pay for a 30 second commercial for the Super Bowl, but maybe not when considering the correlation between the likeability of a company’s super bowl ads and its stock price. Companies that run well-liked commercials have performed relatively well in recent years as investors respond by driving up their share prices not just for the day after the Super Bowl, but for weeks thereafter.

Kenneth Kim, an Assoc. Professor of Finance from the University of Buffalo, studied 102 publicly traded companies that ran 529 commercials in the last 17 Super Bowls, and although the majority of those firms saw a boost after gameday, the companies that saw the biggest boost were the ones with the most liked ads according to USA Today's Ad Meter.

These commercials bring companies into the conscious of consumers as well as investors, and the most liked commercials appear to have had the best effect on the advertising company’s stock performance. From 1996-2007 Super Bowl advertising companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 1.3% and 10 out of the last 12 years.

Let’s take a look at the companies that ran commercials during the 2009 Super Bowl and the implied sales growth expectations priced-in to their stocks. The more realistic the expectations for the implied sales growth are, compared to what the company has delivered historically in sales growth, will give you an idea of which firms are most likely to meet or exceed those expectations. The more realistic the expectations the more likely the company is to out-perform.We will keep an eye out for these stocks short-term to see if any boost in stock performance was realized within the post Super Bowl week.

Company's That Advertised During the Super Bowl with Each Companies Sales Expectations

 ** denotes Sales information gathered from AFG Global Database.

And the best Super Bowl commercial according to USA Today Ad Meter is....

Click Here to view the best Super Bowl Ad of 2009