5-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Petrobras

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 170,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, South American oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro (NYSE: PBR) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Petrobras' business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Petrobras facts

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 98% of the 4,101 members who have rated Petrobras believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include All-Star Geofiz, who is ranked in the top 10% of our community, and frothyjowels.

This past summer, Geofiz touched on Petrobras' exciting upside:

They have made huge discoveries in Brazil's subsalt basins. The sole factor which could prevent Petrobras from becoming the world's largest public oil company is that of financing and schedule. If the company can develop these fields in an orderly manner, nothing can stop them.

Petrobras' massive proven reserves, deepwater drilling expertise, and foothold in the Brazilian market continue to fuel the stock's five-star rating. In fact, Petrobras' three-year average return on equity (21.2%) is slightly higher than that of Chevron (20.7%) and easily trumps Conoco's (0.7%), as well as the beleaguered BP's (12%). Exxon sports an impressive three-year average ROE of 27.7%, but with Petrobras' shares lagging the current oil king's by more 15 percentage points year to date, Petrobras might be the timelier opportunity.

CAPS member frothyjowels sums up the bull case:

This well-diversified company is quietly establishing assets to rival the biggest names in oil. They've made multiple discoveries of new reserves and continue to exert profound influence at home, where infrastructure development in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics will only bolster demand for their product. I expect their bottom line to improve significantly over the long haul, but in the wake of the reduction in oil pricing over the past 3 months, combined with an apparently slowly improving outlook in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems a very safe bet to forecast them to rebound nicely in the very near future, easily outpacing the S&P.

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