This article is part of our Rising Star Portfolios series.
Most investors don't keep tabs on their companies' fundamental value. That's a mistake. If you take the time to read past the headlines and crack a filing now and then, you're in a much better position to spot potential trouble early. Better yet, you'll improve your odds of finding the underappreciated home run stocks that provide the market's best returns.
We can help you keep tabs on your companies with MyWatchlist.com, our free, personalized stock tracking service. Here are three stocks from my watchlist.
1. CAPS Weekly Top Stock Idea: Deckers Outdoor (Nasdaq: DECK )
Each week, I cull a top stock idea from the pitches made on CAPS, The Motley Fool's 170,000-member free investing community. Deckers Outdoors, a pick from December, caught my eye, since its shares have largely remained unchanged, and compared to peer Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX ) , Deckers trades at a lower earnings multiple and has a higher expected growth rate. Also positive, the company has been diversifying sales globally with international sales now accounting for more than one-fifth of all revenue.
To see the pitch selected for CAPS' Weekly Top Stock Idea, click here. If you want to follow my weekly picks you can subscribe to the series' RSS feed or follow on Twitter: @CAPSTopStocks.
2. Aecom Technology (NYSE: ACM )
Aecom is an engineering company focused on planning, architecture, engineering, consulting, and program management. The firm currently has a strong balance sheet and a backlog of $15.5 billion. The stock sells for 10.5 times forward earnings with a return on equity of 13 percent. While competitors' ROEs are comparable, competitors sell for almost twice that, with Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC ) trading at 17.2 forward earnings and Fluor (NYSE: FLR ) trading at 21.1 times forward earnings.
If you are interested in the engineering business, Aecom Technology is definitely one for your watchlist.
3. Collective Brands (NYSE: PSS )
Collective Brands includes Payless ShoeSource, Sperry Topsider, Saucony, Stride Rite, and Keds among others. The $1.3 billion company has an average balance sheet with a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.82. The company had net income of $1.73 a share in the last 12 months, but its free cash flow came in higher at $2.05 a share. At the stock's current $22 that's roughly 11 times FCF for a stable and growing company. Not an outright steal, but cheap by most definitions.
My Foolish bottom line
If you're looking for more information on these companies, keep checking in on my Rising Star portfolio in the coming weeks as I look further into each of them.
This article is part of our Rising Star Portfolios series, where we give some of our most promising stock analysts cold, hard cash to manage on the Fool's behalf. We'd like you to track our performance and benefit from these real-money, real-time free stock picks. Click here to see all of our Rising Star analysts (and their portfolios).
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