Login
Site Policies

Top Buy Picks

MagicDiligence	2.56%
S&P 500 ETF	-2.36%
OUTPERFORM	4.92%

68% of our picks outperform the market.

Take a FREE Trial!

Updated daily. All values annualized from Jan. 2008.

The next value metric we will add to the current Magic Formula list is the price-to-book ratio. Previously, we've covered Magic Formula stocks with the:

• Highest Dividend Yields
• Strongest Relative Strength
• Lowest Price-to-Sales Ratio

Price-to-book is one of the oldest and most intuitive value investing statistics. The "bible" of value investing, Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor, uses the price-to-book ratio as the main criteria for finding undervalued stocks. Book value is the same thing as net worth: all of a company's assets, minus it's liabilities. The net worth is (ideally) what the company's value is when not adding a premium for things like future earnings power. Therefore, a company whose market value is below book value would seem to be an obvious bargain.

Through this series of articles we've also been using James O'Shaughnessy's study of mechanical investing strategies over 50 years, detailed in his book What Works on Wall Street. Buying stocks with low price-to-book ratio as the only criteria performed very well over the 50 year study period, behind only the price-to-sales ratio:

Stocks with Lowest:	Annual Return
Price-to-Sales	15.4%
Price-to-Book	14.4%
Price-to-Earnings	11.2%

Of course, there are a few things to be aware of when buying stocks selling below book value. For one, the book value will be calculated with accounting assumptions made for certain assets such as the worth of intangibles like brand names, patents, exclusivity contracts, and so forth. Also, for many companies the purchase price of acquisitions over the acquired company's book value (known as "goodwill") will be a major portion of assets on the balance sheet, even though it is not an asset that can be bought and sold. Some investors prefer to subtract intangibles and goodwill out from the total assets to get what is known as a "tangible book value". However, all of the book values used in the list below do not do this.

So, with no further ado, here are the 20 Magic Formula stocks with lowest price-to-book ratio:

Ticker	Company	Price-to-Book Ratio
TKTM	Ticketmaster	0.18
CITP	COMSYS IT Partners	0.31
IBAS	iBasis	0.32
KNXA	Kenexa	0.43
ISIL	Intersil	0.43
MTW	Manitowoc	0.55
TSCM	TheStreet.com	0.59
GTLS	Chart Industries	0.59
PCR	Perini Corp	0.66
NOV	National Oilwell Varco	0.67
ELOS	Syneron Medical	0.72
NOC	Northrup Grumman	0.73
NWS	News Corp	0.74
CYNO	Cynosure	0.76
SHFK	Schuff International	0.80
DIVX	DivX	0.82
KG	King Pharmaceuticals	0.83
OPTV	Open TV	0.84
HURC	Hurco Companies	0.84
GPX	GP Strategies	0.84

All 20 of these stocks sell below their stated net worth. Two of them are MagicDiligence Top Buys and a few others were given favorable reviews. As always, however, more research is required before trusting these ratios. For example, the top stock here, Ticketmaster (TKTM), has 63% of it's total assets in goodwill and intangibles. Subtracting these out leaves a tangible price-to-book ratio of close to 1.0 - still pretty cheap but not nearly as impressive as 0.18. On the other hand, Hurco (HURC) has less than 3% of assets in intangibles and goodwill, making it's valuation well below what the company is worth on a net asset basis, and probably worth a good look by value investors.

For the next and final article in this mini-series, we'll put all of the add-on metrics together, and create a list of Magic Formula stocks that rank highly when scored on each additional screen. Since Magic Formula stocks are cheap and high quality by design, this cumulative screen should help identify some of the very best MFI opportunities on a quantitative basis.

Steve owns no position in any stocks discussed in this article.

Calculate Magic Formula statistics for any stock with the MFI Stats Calculator tool.

Earn money promoting MagicDiligence! Affiliate program is now available!.

Lower your risk and increase your returns. A MagicDiligence Membership provides you with in-depth research on the very best stocks in the Magic Formula screen today. Avoid the value traps and get in on the truly great companies. Completely free 30-day trial!

       

Comments

Login to Post A New Comment:

Username:
Password:

   Create a free account