I am always looking for a good deal, whether that means buying an extra box of Cocoa Puffs when they're on sale or pouncing on undervalued stocks. The idea that anybody would sell a stock for less than its worth may seem silly, but legendary value investor Ben Graham tells us, by way of allegory, how we can look out for these situations.
In The Intelligent Investor, Graham introduces readers to a wacky guy named Mr. Market. Mr. Market's game is to pay you house calls on a daily basis to offer to sell you interests in businesses he owns or to buy from you interests in businesses you own. Sometimes Mr. Market will show up at your door very excited and offer you premium prices for your holdings, while at other times he'll be totally depressed about the future and will offer to sell you what he has for as low as pennies on the dollar.
So to find some of the stocks that Mr. Market is depressed about, I've turned once again to The Motley Fool's CAPS investor community. Each of the companies below had been given a five-star rating (the highest) by our community of investors just 30 days ago:
|
Stock
|
30-Day Return
|
One-Year Return
|
Current CAPS Rating (out of 5)
|
|
Ambassadors Group
|
(42.0%)
|
(23.4%)
|
*****
|
|
Syneron Medical (:ELOS)
|
(24.0%)
|
(26.5%)
|
****
|
|
Allegheny Technologies (:ATI)
|
(12.4%)
|
21.3%
|
****
|
|
Golden Star Resources (AMEX:GSS)
|
(10.8%)
|
42.0%
|
*****
|
|
Nabors Industries (NYSE:NBR)
|
(9.9%)
|
(6.8%)
|
****
|
|
Frontier Oil (NYSE:FTO)
|
(9.5%)
|
41.8%
|
*****
|
|
Hercules Offshore (NASDAQ:HERO)
|
(9.4%)
|
(23.8%)
|
*****
|
Data from Yahoo! and Motley Fool CAPS as of Oct. 23.
As the table shows, these stocks are all still very well-regarded by the CAPS community despite their underperformance over the past month. While these are not formal recommendations, they could be a great place to kick off some further research. I'll even get you started with some thoughts on Rule Breakers pick Syneron Medical.
Syneron's gum in the gears
This former five-star stock certainly did surprise investors. Last week, the company announced preliminary results for its third quarter, and they weren't pretty. The company said that revenue would come in at $33 million and net income would fall in the $7 million to $8 million range. This was less than investors had been expecting, and it was particularly disappointing considering management raised its full-year guidance to 25% top-line growth in reporting a positive second quarter. Management blamed the shortfall on manufacturing delays and lowered full-year guidance back to the 20% growth target they had set earlier in the year.
The stumble was a costly one for the stock, which hasn't been able to muster a particularly high P/E ratio given some past questions over execution. However, assuming these really were unusual manufacturing issues, Syneron's story is still intact. The company has been at the leading edge of new light-based technologies that can be used to perform cosmetic fixes that were previously more difficult and costly. Earlier in the year, the company signed an agreement with Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG ) . The agreement hasn't yet contributed to the company's bottom line, but it should provide both financial benefit and increased exposure when it does ramp up.
The stock has been far from what I expected this year, but the long-term prospects still look good. And manufacturing problems aside, the company has continued to perform well this year. A number of CAPS players have also rallied around the stock since the recent drop, including mrsudbury, who said that Syneron has "strong brand exposure with little debt on [its] balance sheet" and claimed that it "has been beaten up unnecessarily by impatient investors."
So has the recent drop created a good buying opportunity? Or is Syneron's stock dead money? Let the community know what you think -- head over to CAPS and share your thoughts with the other 70,000-plus players. Even if you'd prefer to pass on Syneron, you can check out a couple of the other stocks listed above, or any of the 5,000 stocks that are rated on CAPS.
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