Based on the aggregated intelligence of 170,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, power plant operator NRG Energy (NYSE: NRG) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

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

NRG facts

Headquarters (Founded)

Princeton, N.J. (1989)

Market Cap

$4.9 billion

Industry

Independent power producers

Trailing-12-Month Revenue

$8.85 billion

Management

CEO David Crane
CFO Christian Schade

Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years)

11.4%

Cash/Debt

$2.95 billion / $10.6 billion

Competitors

AES (NYSE: AES)

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

On CAPS, 98.5% of the 760 members who have rated NRG believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include All-Star nibs61, who is ranked in the top 5% of our community, and Bigrog72.

Just last month, nibs61 touched on NRG's attractive upside:

Already a good company making money in the energy sector. ... They are on the cutting edge of putting electric pump stations in your own house. The CEO is soo excited about this and the market for this could be huge.

Over the past five years, NRG has grown its top line at a brisk rate of 29.8% annually. That's faster than other utility plays like AES (10.2%), Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) (15.5%), and Southern Co. (NYSE: SO) (5.2%).

CAPS member Bigrog72 elaborates on the bargain opportunity:

This is a diversified alternative energy company that has stakes in several large projects (solar, nuclear, etc.) but not exclusively in one technology so it's a bit of a wildcard but the price used to be close to $30 bucks but timing of the recession and a couple large deals they were trying to put together terminated so I don't think it's had a chance to rise yet. Once the dust settles a bit and they have a couple solid investments should be at least $24 in the shorter term and reevaluate 12 to 18 months from now.

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