5 Top Efficient Stocks to Add to Your Portfolio
Companies with favorable efficiency levels are likely to be on investors’ radar irrespective of market conditions as price performance is believed to be positively correlated with the efficiency level.
Efficiency level, which measures a company’s capability to transform its available input into output, is often considered to be an important parameter to find out whether a company has the potential to yield higher returns or not.
How to Measure Efficiency?
We have considered four popular ratios in order to find efficient companies that have the potential to provide impressive returns.
Inventory Turnover
Inventory level is one of the key indicators of a company’s business health. While a high inventory level may indicate that the company is going through a rough patch in terms of sales, a dwindling level may indicate that the company will run out of stock in a favorable sales condition. This is where inventory turnover comes into play. It is the ratio of 12-month cost of goods sold (COGS) to a 4-quarter average inventory. Thus, a high value of the ratio indicates a low level of inventory relative to COGS, while a low ratio signals that the company has excess inventory.
Receivables Turnover
This ratio is used to measure a company’s capability to extend its credit and collect debts on the basis of that credit. Receivables turnover ratio or the “accounts receivable turnover ratio” or the “debtor’s turnover ratio” is calculated by dividing 12-month sales by four-quarter average receivables. While a high ratio indicates that the company efficiently collects its accounts receivables or has quality customers, a low ratio signals that the company has an inefficient collection procedure or has low-quality customers or an inefficient credit policy.
Asset Utilization
This is a widely used measure of a company’s efficiency. Asset utilization indicates a company’s potential to utilize its assets. It is a ratio of total sales over the past 12 months to the last 4-quarter average of total assets. So, the higher the ratio, the greater is the chance that the company is utilizing its assets efficiently. On the contrary, a low value of the ratio implies that the company is failing to use its assets effectively.
Operating Margin
Another popular efficiency ratio is operating margin. Operating profit margin, which is simply operating income over the past 12 months divided by sales over the same period, indicates how well a company is controlling its operating expenses. If a company has a high operating profit margin in relation to its competitors, it is doing a better job at controlling operating expenses.
All these ratios can be considered as effective measures if one compares different companies within a particular sector or industry. This is the reason why we have considered only those companies that have higher ratios than their respective industry averages.
Screening Parameters
In addition to the above-mentioned ratios, we have added a favorable Zacks Rank – Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) – to the screen with an objective to make this strategy more profitable.
Inventory Turnover, Receivables Turnover, Asset Utilization and Operating Margin greater than industry average
(Values of these ratios higher than industry averages may indicate that the efficiency level of the company is higher than its peers.)
The use of these few criteria narrowed down the universe of over 7,906 stocks to only 13.
Here are five stocks from the 13 that made it through the screen:
Baxter International Inc BAX, through its subsidiaries, provides renal and hospital products. This Zacks Rank #2 company has an average four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 17.14%.
Lantheus Holdings Inc LNTH is engaged in the development, manufacture and commercialization of diagnostic medical imaging agents and products that assist clinicians in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular and other diseases. This Zacks Rank #1 company has an average four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 118.33%.
OraSure Technologies, Inc. OSUR develops, manufactures, markets, and sells oral fluid diagnostic products and specimen collection devices in the U.S., Europe, and internationally. This Zacks Rank #2 company has an average four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 54.43%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
MAM Software Group Inc. MAMS is a technology holding company. The company is a provider of cloud-based business and on premise management solutions for the auto parts, tires and vertical distribution industries. This Zacks Rank #2 company has an average four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 92.86%.
Teradyne, Inc. TER supplies automation equipment for test and industrial applications. This Zacks Rank #1 company has an average four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 25.10%.
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Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.
Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks’ portfolios and strategies are available at: https://www.zacks.com/performance
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