5-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Altria

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 110,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, tobacco king Altria (NYSE: MO) has earned a coveted five-star ranking. Our data has shown that five-star stocks outperform the market by a significant margin; conversely, one-star stocks have woefully lagged the market average.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Altria's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Altria facts

Headquarters (Founded)	Richmond, Virginia (1919)
Market Cap	$43.14 billion
Industry	Tobacco
TTM Revenue	$38.17 billion
Management	CEO Michael Szymanczyk (since 2002); CFO David Beran (since 2007)
Major Brands	Marlboro, Basic, Players, Virginia Slims
Return on Equity (avg. last three years)	29.6%
CAPS members bullish on MO also bullish on	General Electric (NYSE: GE), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO)
CAPS members bearish on MO also bearish on	Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), General Motors (NYSE: GM), Citigroup (NYSE: C)

Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Motley Fool CAPS. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Over on CAPS, fully 1,688 of 1,720 of the All-Star members who have rated Altria -- some 98% -- believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These All-Star bulls include lepant and DemonDoug, both of whom are ranked in the top 10% of our community.

In January, prior to its spinoff of Philip Morris International lepant reminded our community that Altria is a company with, "A 55 year track record of 20% returns, lots of cash, and continual growth; loathing of smoking aside, the business behind Altria is rock solid and it will continue to beat the S&P."

An earlier pitch from DemonDoug in April 2007 shared that bullish attitude, commenting on Altria's dynamic dividend history:

Best performing S&P stock since the S&P was initiated 50 years ago. I own this stock in my Roth IRA personally, and will likely continue to hold and add to my position for the next 3 decades and beyond. ... I can go over the fundamentals, but as a fool.com reader, you probably have a good idea how good [Altria's] fundamentals are. Simply put, this is a dividend achieving stock, continually growing revenues year after year, with a product that dominates the market, and will grow in popularity as the developing world joins the "first world."

What do you think about Altria, or any other stock for that matter? Make your voice heard on Motley Fool CAPS today. More than 110,000 investors are waiting to hear what you have to say. CAPS is 100% free, so simply click here to get started.