5 More Unloved Growth Stocks

Recs

5

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 2,000% 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 to 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 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 (out of a maximum of five) 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

Short Interest

5-Year Growth Estimate

Lululemon Athletica (Nasdaq: LULU)

**

27.8%

42.3%

InterOil (NYSE: IOC)

*

55.9%

25%

Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX)

**

22.6%

24%

CONMED (Nasdaq: CNMD)

*

6.50%

16%

Heidrick & Struggles (Nasdaq: HSII)

**

12.7%

15%

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.

Cloggy Crocs just keeps tempting me with its low, low 0.40 PEG ratio for 2008. But like Foolish colleague Alyce Lomax, I was hoping to see far more improvement in inventory and receivables management in the current quarter. Didn't happen.

Concentrate on the long-term
So today I'm focused on another fashionista, yoga outfitter Lululemon Athletica.

Though trading for more than 100 times trailing earnings -- well above what fellow mall rats Urban Outfitters (Nasdaq: URBN) and Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) fetch -- Lululemon is a more spectacular growth story. Same-store sales were up 36% in the third quarter. Most retailers are lucky to report comps in the high single digits.

Then there's this pitch response last month by CAPS All-Star dwot:

Lululemon's stuff is nice and popular... So far it does not appear to be slowing. They started in Vancouver and their stuff has been popular since they began. Much to my surprise, they had no sales at Xmas when I was in and all the other stores I visited did have sales.

There's not yet enough data to prove that Lululemon has a sustainable pricing advantage via its desirable brand. But the company reported its highest-ever gross margin in Q3.

Intrigued? Me, too, and I've added Lululemon to my CAPS watch list as a result. But that's my take. What's yours? Would you buy Lululemon 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

11/23/2009 4:00 PM
ANF $39.34 Down -0.39 -0.98%
Abercrombie & Fitc… CAPS Rating: *
CNMD $21.76 Up +0.30 +1.40%
CONMED Corp CAPS Rating: **
CROX $5.38 Down -0.07 -1.28%
Crocs, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
HSII $29.33 Up +0.79 +2.77%
Heidrick & Struggl… CAPS Rating: ***
LULU $26.52 Up +0.06 +0.23%
LULULEMON ATHLETIC… CAPS Rating: *
URBN $31.48 Down -0.70 -2.17%
Urban Outfitters,… CAPS Rating: **

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