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5 More Unloved Growth Stocks

Ah, the joys of skepticism.

We rebel investors at Motley Fool Rule Breakers believe the multibaggers in the making, while not often cheap by the numbers, are always misunderstood. The extraordinary skepticism they face makes them excellent value stocks.

Hitting just one of these home runs can make all the difference to your portfolio. Just ask David Gardner, who bought Amazon at a split-adjusted price of $3.24 a share in 1997. He's up more than 2,200% since.

It's stocks like Amazon that helped David produce nine years of better-than-20% average annual returns in the real-money Rule Breaker portfolio, even while suffering stinging losses from Guitar Center and 3Dfx, among others.

Let the haters be your friends
David continues this home run investing tradition today at Rule Breakers. You can follow the moves of his rebel alliance with a free trial of the service. Or, if you prefer to pick your own stocks, there's Motley Fool CAPS, a 100% free stock-picking community whose 83,000-plus participating investors rate stocks on a scale of one to five stars. More than 5,300 rated companies are in the database right now.

How can this help you? Each week, using CAPS, we'll search for one- and two-star stocks that have at least 5% of their available shares sold short but are expected to grow their earnings by no less than 15% over each of the next five years.

Let's have the list
Here are today's unloved growth stocks:

Company

CAPS Rating (out of 5)

Short

5-Year Growth Estimate

SunPower (:SPWR)

**

8.6%

43.3%

Ventana Medical (NASDAQ:VMSI)

**

7.0%

30.0%

Advent Software (NASDAQ:ADVS)

**

13.9%

23.3%

Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI)

**

7.5%

19.7%

Big Lots (:BIG)

*

29.0%

16.7%

Sources: Motley Fool CAPS, Yahoo! Finance.

Bear in mind that this isn't a list of recommendations. Instead, I offer these stocks as candidates for further research.

At first, I was tempted to make my choice Big Lots, an oversold closeout retailer trading at the lower end of its historical multiple to earnings range. Clearance sales rarely last in the stock market.

Let the sun shine
But, today, I'll take SunPower. And not just because solar stocks, as a group, are poised to create billions in shareholder value.

SunPower gets the nod because, in terms of valuation, it's well-positioned among its peers. Behold:

Company

Price-to-Sales

First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR)

49.09

Evergreen Solar

15.81

SunPower

8.23

Suntech Power (NYSE:STP)

6.58

Trina Solar

3.84

Canadian Solar

3.14

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

Though not as cheap as Rule Breakers pick Suntech or the more troubled Trina, SunPower is priced very reasonably -- even more so when you factor in its expected growth in 2008. On that basis, SunPower boasts an extremely attractive 0.9 PEG ratio.

I can't say for sure if valuation is what has compelled top fund managers such as Harry Lange of Fidelity Magellan (FMAGX) and Jackson Robinson of Winslow Green Growth (WGGFX) to buy shares of SunPower, but they have.

So has CAPS All-Star tuffsledding. He explained why in a pitch last week. Quoting:

This is one of the top players in solar... Now that it is back down to earth, this seems to be a good entry point. I wish I could nibble in [thirds] like in real life -- this may well go down some more, but eventually I expect to have some nice gains here.

I agree, but what really interests me is your take. Would you buy SunPower at today's prices? Let us know by signing up for CAPS today. It's 100% free to participate.

See you back here next week for five more unloved growth stocks.

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Related Tickers

5/25/2012 4:00 PM
SIRI $1.93 Down -0.06 -3.02%
Sirius XM Radio CAPS Rating: **
SPWR $5.27 Up +0.11 +2.13%
SunPower Corporati… CAPS Rating: ***
ADVS $26.77 Up +0.15 +0.56%
Advent Software, I… CAPS Rating: *
BIG $37.30 Up +1.55 +4.34%
Big Lots, Inc. CAPS Rating: ***
STP $1.78 Down -0.15 -7.77%
Suntech Power Hold… CAPS Rating: ***

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