By
Anand Chokkavelu, CFA
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More Articles
October 31, 2011
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If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.
In this series, I do the initial legwork for you. To prevent us from being inundated with scores of disparate companies, I conduct my search by industry. This allows us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.
Today, let's look at the chemicals space. Below are the dozen stocks that are within 25% of their 52-week lows and have market caps above $200 million.
|
Company
|
Recent Price
|
52-Week Low
|
52-Week High
|
P/E Ratio (trailing)
|
| Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical (NYSE: SHI ) |
$37.87 |
$32.24 |
$63.05 |
6.5 |
| PolyOne (NYSE: POL ) |
$11.61 |
$9.80 |
$16.61 |
4.4 |
| Praxair (NYSE: PX ) |
$105.27 |
$88.64 |
$111.74 |
23.4 |
| Sigma-Aldrich (Nasdaq: SIAL ) |
$67.78 |
$56.18 |
$76.16 |
18.8 |
| Zep |
$16.13 |
$13.33 |
$20.95 |
20.7 |
| Sherwin-Williams (NYSE: SHW ) |
$84.24 |
$69.47 |
$87.87 |
18.1 |
| Olin (NYSE: OLN ) |
$19.60 |
$16.11 |
$27.16 |
7.0 |
| Airgas |
$71.43 |
$58.00 |
$72.39 |
23.1 |
| Minerals Technologies |
$56.99 |
$46.17 |
$70.68 |
16.4 |
| Air Products & Chemicals |
$89.41 |
$72.26 |
$98.01 |
16.0 |
| Calgon Carbon |
$16.46 |
$13.28 |
$18.20 |
22.2 |
| Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG ) |
$49.96 |
$39.99 |
$60.62 |
19.5 |
Source: S&P Capital IQ and Yahoo! Finance.
Over just the past 10 days, Sinopec shares have gone as low as $33.18 and as high as $43.00. It announced earnings late last week that were roughly flat with the previous year's quarter. As management explained it:
The Group proceeded actively with various tasks, leading to increases in sales volumes and unit prices of products of the Company. As a result, operating income of the Company increased. However, international crude oil prices fluctuated at high levels, resulting in an increase in operating costs; the prices of domestic refined oil products were not adjusted adequately and timely enough; and the competition was further intensified for petrochemicals.
Looking through the list, two other names pop out: PolyOne and Olin, which have P/E ratios well under 10. Note that their forward P/E ratios are also under 10, PolyOne just barely. You can check out PolyOne's latest earnings news here. And I recently took a look at Olin's initial numbers here.
If you are interested in continuing your research on a stock mentioned here, add it to My Watchlist to stay abreast of all of our Foolish analysis.
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