Whatever's going on in the market or a specific company's history, there are always reasons to consider buying shares in a business. After all, some of the best opportunities in stocks are born from historically bloody times.
Motley Fool CAPS hosts a boatload of opinions on nearly 5,400 stocks, from more than 125,000 members, each giving good reasons to own -- or sell -- a stock.
In the case of computing powerhouse Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), a total of 5,404 members have given a bullish or bearish opinion on the company. Scouring the detailed information packed in pitches and other comments on Dell, here are three of the top reasons to buy the computer maker today:
Leaner and meaner: While the company's still a work in progress, founder and CEO Michael Dell continues to make big changes to help revive his namesake business, including cutting more than 11,000 jobs to help save $3 billion a year by 2011. To better compete with rivals Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and spur long-term growth, the company is also looking at expanding its footprint into almost 20,000 retail stores, including Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY).
Change is good: While the economy has battered many upstream and downstream companies like Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) and AMD (NYSE: AMD), Dell's cost cuts proved effective. The company reported a 9% rise in profits and a 160-basis-point gain in operating margins in its most recent fiscal third quarter, despite lower sales dollar volumes.
Cheap shares: Unlike many other firms struggling under the weight of debt, Dell has plenty of cash in the bank, generates strong free cash flow, and is expected to continue to grow its cash-generating ability. Should the company achieve its operating-efficiency goals, many CAPS members argue that investors won't see shares selling at today's levels for much longer.
Of course, there's a lot more devil in the details of these buy-side opinions. That's why CAPS is such a great resource to check and balance your own analysis. You can read the bullish and bearish sides to every stock. To see what the very best CAPS members are saying now about Dell, just click on over to Motley Fool CAPS and have a look -- it's all free, and your opinion's welcome, too.
Further Foolishness:
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