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Are Investors Undervaluing United States Cellular (USM) Right Now?

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While the proven Zacks Rank places an emphasis on earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find strong stocks, we also know that investors tend to develop their own individual strategies. With this in mind, we are always looking at value, growth, and momentum trends to discover great companies.

Looking at the history of these trends, perhaps none is more beloved than value investing. This strategy simply looks to identify companies that are being undervalued by the broader market. Value investors use fundamental analysis and traditional valuation metrics to find stocks that they believe are being undervalued by the market at large.

On top of the Zacks Rank, investors can also look at our innovative Style Scores system to find stocks with specific traits. For example, value investors will want to focus on the "Value" category. Stocks with high Zacks Ranks and "A" grades for Value will be some of the highest-quality value stocks on the market today.

United States Cellular (USM - Free Report) is a stock many investors are watching right now. USM is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), as well as an A grade for Value.

Value investors also frequently use the P/S ratio. This metric is found by dividing a stock's price with the company's revenue. This is a prefered metric because revenue can't really be manipulated, so sales are often a truer performance indicator. USM has a P/S ratio of 0.79. This compares to its industry's average P/S of 0.9.

Finally, we should also recognize that USM has a P/CF ratio of 4.20. This figure highlights a company's operating cash flow and can be used to find firms that are undervalued when considering their impressive cash outlook. This stock's P/CF looks attractive against its industry's average P/CF of 6.75. Over the past 52 weeks, USM's P/CF has been as high as 6.03 and as low as 1.77, with a median of 5.

These figures are just a handful of the metrics value investors tend to look at, but they help show that United States Cellular is likely being undervalued right now. Considering this, as well as the strength of its earnings outlook, USM feels like a great value stock at the moment.


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