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April's "Foolish 8" Stocks

This article is part of our Rising Star series.

Over the next couple of days, I'm once again going to search for great small-cap stocks for my Rising Stars "multivitamin" portfolio using my "Foolish 8" and modified "Foolish 8" screens. Today I'll present the "Foolish 8" criteria, which was developed by Fool co-founder David Gardner to identify profitable, rapid-growth, small-cap stocks:

  1. Revenues: $500 million or less.
  2. Earnings and sales growth: 25% or greater.
  3. Net profit margin: 7% or greater.
  4. Daily dollar volume: $1 million to $25 million.
  5. Insider holdings: 10% or greater.
  6. Share price: $7 or greater.
  7. Relative strength: 90 or greater.
  8. Operating cash flow: a positive number.

The contenders
Five companies passed the screen this month:

Company

Market Cap 
(in millions)

Business

Add to Your Watchlist

3-D Systems
(Nasdaq: TDSC  )

$1,218

3-D printers and products

Add

Financial Engines
(Nasdaq: FNGN  )

$1,217

Portfolio management services

Add

HFF
(NYSE: HF  )

$492

Commercial real estate services

Add

Interactive Intelligence
(Nasdaq: ININ  )

$716

Business software

Add

Textainer Group Holdings
(NYSE: TGH  )

$1,739

Marine container leasing

Add

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

The new stocks on the list this month are Financial Engines, HFF, and Textainer Group. Dropping off the screen from last month were China Biologic Products, DDI, Ebix (Nasdaq: EBIX  ) , GSI Technology, and iGATE (Nasdaq: IGTE  ) . That leaves 3-D Systems and Interactive Intelligence as our veterans.

Biggie smalls
Here's a look at some interesting metrics for these small-frys:

Company

Insider Ownership

Forward P/E

EV/FCF (TTM)

ROE

Net Margin

3-D Systems

10%

70.6

46.3

16%

12%

Financial Engines

22%

78.1

NM

61%

57%

HFF

19%

31.5

NM

22%

8%

Interactive Intelligence

24%

28.3

34.1

18%

9%

Textainer Group Holdings

12%

14.3

NM

22%

39%

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. P/E = price-to-earnings ratio; EV = enterprise value; FCF = free cash flow; TTM = trailing 12 months; ROE = return on equity.

The NM above stands for "not meaningful," which is the result of dividing by negative free cash flow. (A couple of notes: In this case I'm using Capital IQ's unlevered free cash flow definition.) If any of these companies look interesting enough for me to research further, I'll delve more into the reasoning behind the negative FCF.

Tomorrow I'll show you the results of this month's Modified Foolish 8 screen, and then talk about the companies that interest me, from both screens, in more depth.

If you're interested in keeping up with any of these companies, add them to your free watchlist by clicking the "add" button in the far-right column of the top table. You can also follow me on Twitter and check out the multivitamin discussion board. Until tomorrow!

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This article is part of our Rising Star Portfolios series, where we give some of our most promising stock analysts cold, hard cash to manage on the Fool's behalf. We'd like you to track our performance and benefit from these real-money, real-time free stock picks. See all of our Rising Star analysts(and their portfolios).

Fool analyst Rex Moore's words are kind, but his eyes are wild. He owns no companies mentioned here. Ebix and Interactive Intelligence are Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendations. The Fool owns shares of 3-D Systems and Ebix. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On April 14, 2011, at 9:00 PM, DolonAltekar wrote:

    Hi. TDSC makes 3D printers, not 3D software. It's a new prototyping and manufacturing technique

  • Report this Comment On April 15, 2011, at 10:07 AM, artgcay wrote:

    Hi, whats the criteria for dropping previous candidates and adding new ones- just superior numbers in your screen? I am particularly wondering about your current take on ebix

  • Report this Comment On April 15, 2011, at 10:39 AM, TMFOrangeblood wrote:

    DolonAltekar, we tweaked the description, thanks.

    artgcay,

    Each month I run the screen and show all the companies that pass every criteria. So I personally am not dropping or adding companies. I suspect Ebix dropped off because of the relative strength requirement of 90.

    My personal take on Ebix is that I don't understand enough about the company's business, and all the mess that's going on with it, to be interested in it.

  • Report this Comment On April 28, 2011, at 4:12 PM, nswanberg wrote:

    What happened to TDSC?

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Related Tickers

5/25/2012 4:00 PM
IGTE $16.95 Down -0.11 -0.64%
iGATE Corp CAPS Rating: *****
ININ $25.24 Down -0.26 -1.02%
Interactive Intell… CAPS Rating: ****
TGH $33.88 Up +0.04 +0.12%
Textainer Group CAPS Rating: *****
HF $13.16 Down -0.12 -0.90%
HFF, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
DDD $30.63 Up +0.22 +0.72%
3D Systems Corp CAPS Rating: *****
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FNGN $20.91 Up +0.83 +4.13%
Financial Engines CAPS Rating: **

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