Wall Street's Buy List

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 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 83,000-plus lay and professional investors on Motley Fool CAPS agree with Wall Street's opinions, it 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:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
Main Street and Wall Street seem to be reading from the same playbook this week, differing only on the oft-maligned DryShips (which we seem to hate and the professionals appear to love). Everybody else on the bankers' buy list, however, gets an above-average four-star rating among mainstream investors.

What's a Fool to do when faced with such an embarrassment of riches? Well, I intend to go with the stock that our growth investing team at Motley Fool Rule Breakers has tagged as a likely winner: Infinera, a smallish telecom equipment maker whose even smaller "optical switching on a chip" offerings compete with products from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN), and Nortel (NYSE: NT). Let's see what our players have to say about it.

The bull case for Infinera
We'll begin with a few words last November from the Fool's own TMFBreakerJava, a member of the Rule Breakers team:

Optical switching on a chip is the breakthrough technology driving this company's explosive growth. Optimizing optical networks can greatly increase their throughput and Infinera's technology allows providers to do this in a cost-effective way. ... [G]rowth in demand for bandwidth should continue its rapid increase. ... [With] inexpensive optimization ... the cost advantages are enormous. This is the proposition behind Infinera's explosive growth.

In a pitch from last week, the imaginatively named PenguinOnFire says Infinera has found a "[d]isruptive technology ready to take off," and a "more efficient and cheaper way to deliver fiber optic signals end-to-end. Bandwidth control flexibility is a nice plus."

And finally, MJKpayday waxed poetic a couple of weeks ago in describing Infinera's prospects: "If today's fiber optic network were compared to the American highway system than tomorrow's fiber optic network with Infinera technology may as well be the German autobahn system."

Kudos on the Information Superhighway allusions, MJKpayday. But does this stock brake for valuation?

At first glance, you might not think so. Infinera has no P/E at all ... because it has no accounting profits as understood by GAAP. And yet, the company does have free cash flow -- $2.9 million last year. Granted, that's not a lot of cash to support a $1.2 billion market cap, but it's a start. And based on analyst projections of 46%-per-year profits growth over the next half-decade, Infinera's growth rate will be hogging the left-hand lane for years to come.

Time to chime in
Of course, the aim of this column isn't just to tell you what I think about Infinera Corp -- or even what other CAPS players are saying. We also want to hear your thoughts. Does this stock fulfill your need for speed, or do you prefer companies that come equipped with GAAP profit airbags? Click on over to Motley Fool CAPS and tell us what you think.

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