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Bull Of The Day: Fifth Street Asset Management (FSAM)

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Fifth Street Asset Management has two consecutive beats of the Zacks Consensus Estimate under its belt and some impressive increase in earnings estimates. The stock sports “A’s” for both Value and Growth Style Scores and is the Bull of the Day.

Why I like This Stock

I like to give a quick summary of the ideas why I selected this stock for the Bull of the Day.  Beyond the idea of having increasing estimates and a favorable Zacks Rank, I also like:

* The valuation, with a 9x forward multiple 

* Excellent earnings estimate revisions

* Potential for fewer regulations in its industry

* In the #1 sector according to the Zacks Sector Rank

* Should move higher with most financials as Fed Hikes

* Candidate for Zacks Stocks Under $10 Investor Service

Earnings History

The earnings history for FSAM is pretty good.  Over the last four reports there was a meet, a miss and two consecutive beats.  The most recent reports were both beats and they each helped drive the stock price higher by more than 16.7% in each of the sessions following the report.

Two quarters with the stock moving significantly higher made me run to the calendar to look for the next report.  The December 2016 quarter will be reported in the second or third week of March.

Follow Brian Bolan on Twitter at @BBolan1

Description

Fifth Street Asset Management is an asset management holding company. The firm provides asset management services through its subsidiaries. The firm has over $5 billion of assets under management across two publicly-traded business development companies, Fifth Street Finance and Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp. , as well as multiple private investment vehicles.  The Fifth Street platform provides innovative and customized financing solutions to small and mid-sized businesses across the capital structure through complementary investment vehicles and co-investment capabilities.  Fifth Street Asset Management was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Earnings Estimates

Here is the reason this stock has a strong Zacks Rank.  The earnings estimates keep moving higher, and part of that can be explained by the recent beats.  The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 was $0.49 back in July of last year, but moved higher to $0.63 in August.  In December there was another jump, this time to $0.71 and that is there the estimate sits today.

The 2017 number also experienced a recent jump in December.  The Zacks Consensus Estimate was called for $0.62 in November but following the most recent beat the number soared to $0.75.

This is just what investors want to see.

Valuation

One thing that I really like to see is a stock trading at a discount while showing excellent earnings estimate revisions.  This is just that sort of scenario, with a forward multiple of only 9x compared to the 15x industry average.  The discount is present in most multiples, including price to sales, with FSAM sporting a 0.5x price to sales multiple while the industry average is a solid 4.4x.

Financial Stocks

Of late, I have been talking a lot about Bank of America (BAC - Free Report) and Key Corp (KEY - Free Report) .  The premise has been that there are two major drivers that should help those banks, namely higher interest rates and less regulation.  This will also serve to help Fifth Street Asset Management (FSAM) as money managers often like to buy stocks in “baskets” so as to limit the exposure to one company.  That means while they will be buying banks like BAC and KEY, FSAM will also be of interest to those big buyers.

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