Building a successful stock portfolio starts with finding great businesses. And finding great businesses requires digging through financial statements, news, and other information sources to find companies with leading growth rates, strong margins, and healthy financials.  

In our PROspecting Stocks screen, we evaluate proprietary community intelligence from the 135,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS as well as four key, hand-picked fundamental criteria. 

Our goal is to accelerate your research, and find the stocks that are worth a closer look. So get out your shovel and pick axe as we start digging for gold!

Diamond Offshore vs. Industry Peers

Criteria

Diamond Offshore (NYSE:DO)

Y/N?

ENSCO International (NYSE:ESV)

Y/N?

Lufkin Industries (NASDAQ:LUFK)

Y/N?

Boots & Coots International Well (NYSE:WEL)

Y/N?

CAPS Community Rating

We prefer 4-star or 5-star stocks.

*****

YES

*****

YES

*****

YES

*****

YES

CAPS 1000

We like stocks rated "outperform" by 80% of top CAPS members.

96.7% Outperform

YES

100% Outperform

YES

100% Outperform

YES

95.5%

Outperform

YES

Five-Year Revenue Growth

We like to see five-year revenue growth of at least 10%.

37.7%

YES

27.9%

YES

16.7%

YES

57.4%

YES

Gross Margin (TTM)

We like to see gross margins of 35% or higher.

63.9%

YES

68.3%

YES

29.0%

no

31.7%

no

Total Debt-to-Equity

A total debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50 or less gets a check.

0.28

YES

0.06

YES

0.01

YES

0.47

YES

Return on Equity

We look for a minimum of 14% return on equity.

37.8%

YES

20.0%

YES

15.5%

YES

12.6%

no

What do you think about Diamond Offshore?  If you'd like to make your own call on Diamond Offshore, or post a pitch about why you think it will outperform or underperform the market, click here. Of course, you can also just visit to see what other members are saying about it now or what they are saying about more than 5,300 other stocks by joining us on CAPS.

Our PROspecting Stocks screen is a simplified version of the special checklist that has helped Jeff Fischer and the Pro community to find the next opportunities for the Motley Fool Pro portfolio.  Learn more about Motley Fool Pro.