America's Next Top Value Stock

Though value investors have been some of the most successful investors out there, finding good stocks at bargain prices is far from easy. Though markets aren't as efficient as some university professors may want to tell you, they generally do a pretty good job pricing stocks. So while there are good deals out there, you're going to have to break a bit of a mental sweat if you want to make sure that you're investing in the stock equivalent of Brad Pitt, not Kato Kaelin.

Fortunately for us, in the search for stock market values, we have the 130,000-plus members of The Motley Fool's CAPS community voting on which stocks are true stars and which are just posers. To gather some ideas, I've dug up a handful of companies valued at less than twice their book value -- a measure often used by value investors. Below is a selection from the array of companies that fall into this category, but you can also run the same screen that I did on the CAPS screener.

Source: Yahoo! Finance and CAPS as of April 3.

As you can see, although these stocks all carry value-like multiples, the CAPS community obviously doesn’t think that all are worthy of your investment dollars.

No twinkle in these stars
Financials? We don't need no stinkin' financials! OK, there are some financials that CAPS players still like. Debt specialist Portfolio Recovery Associates carries a five-star rating, and don't forget that Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) is also generally considered a financial.

But as for Regions and Capital One, well, they're playing in another league. In that part of the financial world investors are still seeing leveraged balance sheets and borrowers that may or may not make good on their payments. CAPS All-Star jstegma recently stuck Capital One with an underperform rating and gave a clever take on the company's "what's in your wallet" marketing campaign, writing "What's in YOUR balance sheet???"

Toyota, meanwhile, may look like a rock-solid company next to General Motors (NYSE:GM) or Chrysler, but many CAPS members are still wary of the sluggish market for autos. While Toyota's three-star rating may not mean run and hide, it certainly doesn't mean rush to buy.

A five-star is born!
So $147 per barrel may not yet have been a reasonable price for oil and maybe worldwide oil shortages aren't actually breathing down our necks. That also means that at least from a financial perspective alternative energy may not be as pressing an issue as recently thought. That hasn't kept CAPS members away from Suntech Power, though -- currently over 4,000 members have given the stock a thumbs-up and it has a four-star rating.

But those four stars weren't enough to allow Suntech to top this week's top value stock: Titanium Metals. Aside from the generally bad economy, Timet has faced other challenges recently, including repeated delays from Boeing (NYSE:BA) on its 787 Dreamliner. But CAPS members see a brighter future ahead for Timet, and SmoothHughes summed up some of the bullish perspective when giving the stock a thumbs-up last week:

This company has no debt and continues to show positive cash flow even with a steep decline in the price of titanium. These two factors should see [Timet] through the recession to benefit from increasing industrial orders over the next few years. The worldwide demand for this metal should continue to increase because of its high strength-to-weight ratio (excellent for more making vehicles such as airplanes more fuel efficient) and exceptional resistance to corrosion (desalinization plants, chemical refining, etc). Plus titanium is my favorite element.

Make your vote count!
Do you agree that Titanium Metals could be America's next top value stock? Click over to CAPS and let the rest of the community know what you think. And while you're there, you can log your vote for the other stocks that you think should be in the running.

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