Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. So why does the media focus so much attention on what Wall Street says about companies, instead of what it does with them?
Luckily for Wall Street watchers, the Internet brings us MSN Money's list of which companies the institutions are buying. True, we should be as skeptical of Wall Street's actions as we are of its words. But when the 110,000-plus lay and professional investors on Motley Fool CAPS agree with Wall Street's opinions, it just might be time for some buying.
Here's the latest edition of Wall Street's Buy List, alongside our investors' opinions of the companies involved:
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Recent Price
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CAPS Rating (out of 5):
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Jabil Circuit (NYSE: JBL )
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$16.41
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***
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Hilb Rogal & Hobbs (NYSE: HRH )
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$43.46
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**
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Fuel Systems Solutions (Nasdaq: FSYS )
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$38.50
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**
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HireRight (Nasdaq: HIRE )
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$17.10
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**
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MEDecision (Nasdaq: MEDE )
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$6.65
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**
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Companies are selected from the "Institutional Ownership Up Last Month" list published on MSN Money on the Saturday following close of trading last week. Recent price provided by Yahoo! Finance. CAPS ratings from Motley Fool CAPS.
Wall Street vs. Main Street
Main Street investors are feeling a bit jaded about Wall Street's top picks this week. I believe the comment most often voiced went something like: "Don't talk to me about $&*@% stocks!" And the ratings shown above reflect their disillusionment.
You can't really blame them -- after all, the sky really does seem to be falling lately. But amid all the misery, bargains are beginning to emerge. Take, for example, Jabil Circuit. While it only gets a barely passing grade of three stars above, the company just finished reporting quite good earnings -- operating profits, for example, nearly doubled in Q3.
The stock trades for just nine times trailing free cash flow today, and the company carries a moderate debt load and pays a tidy dividend. And as bad as the rest of the economy is looking, analysts still expect Jabil to grow at about 19% per year over the next half decade.
The bull case for Jabil Circuit
- Writing early last year, CAPS All-Star Gtrinvestor called Jabil "one of the most effective and efficient contract manufacturers out there. They continually post positive net income (which is more than most in this field can say), and management knows how to diversify their business in an effective way."
- Fellow All-Star mkeszler chimed in a few months later, calling Jabil "a value-priced growth stock ... [and] a top outfit in the contract manufacturing space. Solid earnings even when others are losing money ... improved prospects going forward."
- Seeing CEO Timothy Main buy 50,000 shares of company stock back in March, and observing that the stock was "near 52-week lows," tiobueno gave Jabil the thumbs-up in April. Result: a mucho bueno 79 points’ worth of market outperformance for tio.
Can you do as well by following tio's -- and Wall Street's -- lead today? Well, Jabil's pretty far from its 52-week low right now. Yet the stock price still looks attractive. Nine times free cash flow for a 19% grower -- you don't see deals like this every day.
While it's true that Jabil hasn't been growing as fast as archrival Flextronics (Nasdaq: FLEX ) lately, Jabil only recently signed a deal to manufacture printers for Zebra Technologies (Nasdaq: ZBRA ) . My guess is that as the Zebra revenues begin to roll in, Jabil's growth will perk right back up.
Time to chime in
But hey, I could be wrong. So could any of Jabil's fans, cited above. There's certainly plenty of skepticism over the company's prospects to balance out the optimism -- so which way do you lean on Jabil? Come on over to CAPS, and cast your vote.
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