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Scoop Up These 4 GARP Stocks to Receive Handsome Returns

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If you are looking for a profitable portfolio of stocks offering the best of value and growth investing, try the growth at a reasonable price or GARP strategy.

The strategy helps investors gain exposure to undervalued stocks with impressive prospects. Unlike a blend strategy, a portfolio that uses GARP investing is expected to include stocks that offer the best value and growth investing. National Fuel Gas Company (NFG - Free Report) , BGC Group, Inc. (BGC - Free Report) , Jabil (JBL - Free Report) and NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) are some GARP stocks that hold promise.

GARP Metrics: Mix of Growth & Value Metrics

The GARP strategy seeks to offer an ideal investment by utilizing the best features of value and growth investing. Investors adopting the GARP approach prefer buying stocks priced below the market or any reasonable target determined by fundamental analysis. These stocks also have solid prospects in terms of cash flow, revenues, earnings per share (EPS) and so on.

Growth Metrics

A strong earnings growth history and impressive earnings prospects are the main concepts that GARP investors borrow from the growth investing strategy. However, instead of super-normal growth rates, pursuing stocks with a more stable and reasonable growth rate is a tactic of GARP investors. Hence, growth rates between 10% and 20% are considered ideal under the GARP strategy.

Another metric that growth and GARP investors consider is the return on equity (ROE). GARP investors look for a strong and higher ROE than the industry average to identify superior stocks. Stocks with positive cash flows find precedence under the GARP plan.

Value Metrics

GARP investing prioritizes the popular value metrics — the price-to-earnings (P/E) and price-to-book (P/B) ratios. Though this investing style picks stocks with higher P/E ratios than value investors, it avoids companies with extremely high P/E ratios.

Using the GARP principle, we ran a screen to identify stocks that should offer solid returns in the near term.

Screening Parameters

Along with the criteria discussed in the above section, we have considered a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy).

Last 5-year EPS & projected 3-5-year EPS growth rates between 10% and 30% (Strong EPS growth history and prospects ensure improving business.)

ROE (over the past 12 months) greater than the industry average (Higher ROE than the industry average indicates superior stocks.)

P/E and P/B ratios less than the M-industry average (P/E and P/B ratios less than that of the industry indicate that the stocks are undervalued.)

Here are four stocks from the eight that made it through the screening process:

National Fuel Gas Company is an integrated energy company with natural gas assets located in the prolific Appalachian basin and oil-producing assets in California. The company operates through the following segments, namely Exploration and Production and Other, Pipeline and Storage and Gathering, and Utility and Energy Marketing.

National Fuel Gas' systematic investments should strengthen its operations and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Strong liquidity should allow it to meet debt obligations. The company's steady process of replacing and modernizing the existing pipelines should further boost earnings. The company also acquired Shell’s assets, which should further boost its top-line performance.

This Zacks Rank #1 stock has surged 30.1% in the year-to-date period. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 8.27%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NFG’s fiscal 2025 earnings has moved north by 0.9% to $6.9 per share over the past 30 days. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

BGC Group is a brokerage and financial technology company. Through its various affiliates, it specializes in the brokerage of a broad range of products, including Fixed Income, Foreign Exchange, Equities, Energy and Commodities, Shipping and Futures.

The company recently completed the acquisition of OTC Global Holdings, LP, one of the fastest-growing energy and commodities brokerage firms. The OTC Global deal will likely provide highly complementary synergies by combining related energy and ship-broking teams. This collaboration will enhance market knowledge, generate unique trade ideas and drive deeper insights for more strategic decision-making. BGC Group is well-positioned to capitalize on growing environmental and energy transition trends and will keep benefiting from consistent global demand for oil, the single largest source of energy. As such, the company’s top-line growth is anticipated to be impressive.

This Zacks Rank #1 stock has declined 6.6% in the year-to-date period. The company has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 3.26%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BGC Group’s 2025 earnings has moved north by 5.2% to $1.22 per share over the past 30 days.

Jabil is one of the largest global suppliers of electronic manufacturing services. The company offers electronics design, production, product management and after-market services to customers in the aerospace, automotive, computing, consumer, defense, industrial, instrumentation, medical, networking, peripherals, storage and telecommunications industries.

Jabil has an established global presence and a worldwide connected factory network, enabling it to scale production per evolving market dynamics. Strong performance in healthcare, automotive and transportation, coupled with growth in 5G, is expected to boost the top line. A higher free cash flow indicates optimum utilization of assets and improved operational efficiency. Management’s focus on integrating advanced AI and ML capabilities is a tailwind.

This Zacks Rank #2 stock has declined 6.2% in the year-to-date period. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 4.86%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for JBL’s fiscal 2025 earnings has moved north by 2.3% to $8.96 per share over the past 30 days.

NVIDIA is the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the graphic processing unit or GPU. Over the years, the company’s focus has evolved from PC graphics to artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions that now support high performance computing (HPC), gaming and virtual reality (VR) platforms.

The growing demand for generative AI and large language models using GPUs based on NVIDIA’s Hopper and Blackwell architectures is aiding data center revenues. The continued ramp-up of Ada RTX GPU workstations in the ProViz end market following the normalization of channel inventory is acting as a tailwind. Collaborations with more than 320 automakers and tier-one suppliers are likely to advance its presence in the autonomous vehicles space.

This Zacks Rank #2 stock has moved south by 24.4% in the year-to-date period. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 7.92%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVDA’s fiscal 2026 earnings has moved south by 1.8% to $4.32 per share over the past 30 days.

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Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.

Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks' portfolios and strategies are available at: https://www.zacks.com/performance
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