Is Vonage the Perfect Stock?

Everyone would love to find the perfect stock. But will you ever really find a stock that gives you everything you could possibly want?

One thing's for sure: If you don't look, you'll never find truly great investments. So let's first take a look at what you'd want to see from a perfect stock, and then decide if Vonage Holdings (NYSE: VG) fits the bill.

The quest for perfection
When you're looking for great stocks, you have to do your due diligence. It's not enough to rely on a single measure, because a stock that looks great based on one factor may turn out to be horrible in other ways. The best stocks, however, excel in many different areas, which all come together to make up a very attractive picture.

Some of the most basic yet important things to look for in a stock are:

• Growth. Expanding businesses show healthy revenue growth. While past growth is no guarantee that revenue will keep rising, it's certainly a better sign than a stagnant top line.
• Margins. Higher sales don't mean anything if a company can't turn them into profits. Strong margins ensure a company is able to turn revenue into profit.
• Balance sheet. Debt-laden companies have banks and bondholders competing with shareholders for management's attention. Companies with strong balance sheets don't have to worry about the distraction of debt.
• Money-making opportunities. Companies need to be able to turn their resources into profitable business opportunities. Return on equity helps measure how well a company is finding those opportunities.
• Valuation. You can't afford to pay too much for even the best companies. Earnings multiples are simple, but using normalized figures gives you a sense of how valuation fits into a longer-term context.
• Dividends. Investors are demanding tangible proof of profits, and there's nothing more tangible than getting a check every three months. Companies with solid dividends and strong commitments to increasing payouts treat shareholders well.

With those factors in mind, let's take a closer look at Vonage.

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard and Poor's. *As of December 2009. NM = not meaningful; Vonage had negative shareholder equity during the period. Total score = number of passes.

Vonage's score of 2 doesn't look too good. But even if the stock is far from perfect right now, things aren't all bad for the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) provider. After years of losses, the company has posted modest profits in four of its last six quarters. Shares have skyrocketed as speculators jump on Vonage's potential turnaround story.

But just as the company has struggled in the past, it faces an uphill battle going forward. With Vonage providing only audio and still working on rolling out video and messaging services, video-phone competitor Skype -- which eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) sold 65% of in a going-private spinoff last year -- has a huge competitive advantage. Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Voice offers free phone calls that Vonage is still trying to charge for. Yet unlike big telecoms AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), which now offer telephone, broadband, and TV services in package offerings, Vonage has only its phone service. Unless it innovates soon, Vonage could find itself left behind.

Keep searching
No stock is a sure thing, but some stocks are a lot closer to perfect than others. By looking for the perfect stock, you'll go a long way toward improving your investing prowess and learning how to separate out the best investments from the rest.

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