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 to 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 97,000 participating investors rate stocks on a scale of one to five stars. More than 5,600 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 10% over each of the next five years.

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

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

NetSuite, the top grower two weeks ago, has since lost 12.9%. Yet the growth story for software-as-a-service in general, and NetSuite in particular, is unchanged.

Chip maker Standard Microsystems, on the other hand, recently projected weak first-quarter earnings. Few CAPS investors were surprised; three of the last five to rate Standard said it would underperform. Two of those bears rank in the top 10% of CAPS players.

Let the VeraSun shine
Oddly, my top pick today, ethanol specialist VeraSun, isn't much of a grower if you believe analysts. I don't. My Foolish colleague Toby Shute best explains why here. Quoting:

Also critical is that VeraSun has no apparent liquidity issues standing in the way of its expansion. Recall that Aventine Renewable Energy (NYSE: AVR), with a fistful of frozen auction-rate securities, is stymied. I have no idea if these recently unmarketable securities are the cause of Pacific Ethanol's (Nasdaq: PEIX) recent reporting delay. We do know that VeraSun reported that out of $43 million in auction rates, it was able to unload $40 million at face value. Bravo to them for astutely managing shareholder money.

Higher demand. Weaker competition. Typically, that's a recipe for outsized growth.

But, of course, there are risks. Corn-based ethanol, as VeraSun produces, impacts the food supply and attracts the ire of environmentalists, who justifiably abhor the pollutants created during production. VeraSun could, in theory, be protested right out of existence.

In the end, however, VeraSun, for all the obstacles it faces, could end up being a pretty cheap growth stock. CAPS investor scbeachbum explains how in a pitch from February. Quoting:

Ethanol use is expanding with higher blending requirements and now stocks are so cheap it's easier to buy existing companies for their plants than to build new plants and wait a few years for them to come online. Expanded roll out of E85 and flex fuel vehicles will help longer term, too.

Agreed. But I'm more interested in what you think. Would you buy VeraSun 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.