Is Career Education Corporation (NASDAQ:CECO) Undervalued?
Career Education Corporation (NASDAQ:CECO), a consumer services company based in United States, saw a significant share price rise of over 20% in the past couple of months on the NasdaqGS. As a small cap stock, hardly covered by any analysts, there is generally more of an opportunity for mispricing as there is less activity to push the stock closer to fair value. Is there still an opportunity here to buy? Let’s take a look at Career Education’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if the opportunity still exists. View our latest analysis for Career Education
What’s the opportunity in Career Education?
According to my valuation model, Career Education seems to be fairly priced at around 10% below my intrinsic value, which means if you buy Career Education today, you’d be paying a fair price for it. And if you believe the company’s true value is $13.65, then there isn’t much room for the share price grow beyond what it’s currently trading. So, is there another chance to buy low in the future? Given that Career Education’s share is fairly volatile (i.e. its price movements are magnified relative to the rest of the market) this could mean the price can sink lower, giving us an opportunity to buy later on. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for share price volatility.
What does the future of Career Education look like?
Future outlook is an important aspect when you’re looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so let’s also take a look at the company’s future expectations. Though in the case of Career Education, it is expected to deliver a relatively unexciting top-line growth of 3.82% in the next few years, which doesn’t help build up its investment thesis. Growth doesn’t appear to be a main reason for a buy decision for the company, at least in the near term.
What this means for you:
Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in Career Education’s future outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value?
Are you a potential investor? If you’ve been keeping an eye on Career Education, now may not be the most optimal time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the positive outlook means it’s worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.
Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on Career Education. You can find everything you need to know about Career Education in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Career Education, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
