Times Value Ratings

Investor interest in “value” stocks--those that sell for cheap prices relative to their underlying earnings--has risen lately, as these long-neglected stocks have shown signs of vigor. So The Times today debuts its Value Ratings, based on a screen using data from Zacks Investment Research Inc. The ratings equally weight three criteria: PEG ratio, or price-to-earnings-growth, here defined as a company’s price-to-earnings ratio divided by its projected three-to-five-year annualized profit growth; the percentage change in insider stock holdings over the last 24 weeks; and the average analyst rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1.0 meaning “strong buy” and 5.0 meaning “strong sell”). PEG ratios and insider buying figures are tools value-oriented stock pickers often use to find equities that may be under-appreciated and poised for growth. Analyst ratings, of course, are used by growth investors as well as value investors. As with any stock screen, there can be no guarantees. The Times does not recommend buying or selling any of these stocks. But the chart may point out some stocks worthy of further analysis. As with The Times’ Power Ratings, which recently highlighted strong and weak stocks in the Wall Street, California pages based on growth-oriented criteria, the Value Ratings will be updated periodically.

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Est. % chg. in Wed. PEG insider holdings Rank Company Ticker close ratio* (24 weeks) 1 Trendwest Resorts TWRI $23.13 0.50 +71.3% 2 BE Aerospace BEA 17.56 0.48 +104.9 3 Schawk SGK 11.81 0.64 +153.8 4 Bacou USA BAU 16.56 0.67 +224.0 5 ICN Pharm. ICN 31.00 0.64 +66.7 6 Friede Goldman FGI 16.94 0.52 +100.0 7 Amer. Retirement ACR 16.00 0.61 +50.6 8 Lincare Holdings LNCR 24.81 0.62 +322.6 9 Quanex NX 26.81 0.50 +64.3 10 Meristar Hospital MHX 21.88 0.57 +35.3 11 Inter-Tel A INTL 14.31 0.57 +29.6 12 Interim Svcs. IS 21.06 0.62 +160.5 13 Republic Svcs. RSG 22.94 0.79 +2,000.0 14 Felcor Lodging FCH 22.25 0.58 +89.4 15 Michaels Stores MIKE 29.38 0.66 +51.5 16 First Amer. Fin’l FAF 15.25 0.49 +25.4 17 Service Experts SVE 18.25 0.44 +9.5 18 American Axle AXL 14.88 0.61 +38.2 19 Hutchinson Tech HTCH 25.63 0.49 +51.5 20 Wolverine World WWW 13.38 0.76 +355.6

Avg. analyst Rank rating** 1 1.17 2 1.50 3 1.25 4 1.25 5 1.00 6 1.57 7 1.14 8 1.57 9 1.60 10 1.30 11 1.25 12 1.63 13 1.35 14 1.69 15 1.37 16 1.60 17 1.39 18 1.50 19 1.93 20 1.57

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*Trailing price-to-earnings ratio divided by three-to-five-year projected annualized profit growth

**On a scale of 1 to 5, 1.0 equals “strong buy” and 5.0 equals “strong sell”

Source: Zacks Investment Research (https://www.zacks.com)