The following video is part of our "Motley Fool Conversations" series, in which industrials editor/analyst Isaac Pino discusses topics across the investing world.
In today's edition, Isaac takes a cue from Fool colleague Dan Dzombak, who recently described a time-tested tool for uncovering companies with above-average cash flows. Sometimes a simple metric like return on equity (ROE) or return on assets (ROA) can be misconstrued due to legal accounting manipulations, but evaluating a company based on cash generated from invested capital (ROIC) helps minimize these effects. Isaac applies this method to the Dow companies to identify the cheapest components and finds Cisco near the top.
Cisco leads the pack when it comes to switches, capturing 60% of the market share, according to Morningstar research. On the core router front, competitor Alcatel-Lucent recently introduced new routers that support up to 32 terabytes per second, but Cisco's ability to remain one step ahead should push the stock higher as it enters into the cloud arena and services markets.
While dot-coms come and go, Cisco remains a solid tech investment as it builds out the information superhighway. The Motley Fool believes behind-the-scenes companies like Cisco could emerge in the mobile revolution as we enter a new era of computing. Uncover these stocks in our recent free report, "The Next Trillion-Dollar Revolution," which details a hidden component play inside mobile phones that also is a leader in the exploding Chinese market. Inside the report, we not only describe why the mobile revolution will dwarf any other technology revolution seen before it, but we also name the company at the forefront of the trend. Hundreds of thousands have requested access to previous reports, and you can access this new report today by clicking here -- it's free.
