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Should Value Investors Buy Ready Capital (RC) Stock?

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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.

Of these, value investing is easily one of the most popular ways to find great stocks in any market environment. Value investors use fundamental analysis and traditional valuation metrics to find stocks that they believe are being undervalued by the market at large.

Zacks has developed the innovative Style Scores system to highlight stocks with specific traits. For example, value investors will be interested in stocks with great grades in the "Value" category. When paired with a high Zacks Rank, "A" grades in the Value category are among the strongest value stocks on the market today.

One stock to keep an eye on is Ready Capital (RC - Free Report) . RC is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), as well as an A grade for Value. The stock is trading with P/E ratio of 8.94 right now. For comparison, its industry sports an average P/E of 9. Over the past year, RC's Forward P/E has been as high as 10 and as low as 7.45, with a median of 9.06.

Another valuation metric that we should highlight is RC's P/B ratio of 0.91. The P/B is a method of comparing a stock's market value to its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. RC's current P/B looks attractive when compared to its industry's average P/B of 1.30. Within the past 52 weeks, RC's P/B has been as high as 0.97 and as low as 0.77, with a median of 0.87.

Value investors also use the P/S ratio. The P/S ratio is is calculated as price divided by sales. This is a popular metric because sales are harder to manipulate on an income statement, so they are often considered a better performance indicator. RC has a P/S ratio of 2.83. This compares to its industry's average P/S of 3.53.

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


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