Do you prefer the largest and best established stocks? Interested in technology stocks? Do you prefer dividend stocks? Looking for ways to dig deeper into a company's profitability? For ideas on how to evaluate this, we ran a screen.
The Net Margin is a profitability metric that illustrates, by percentage, how much of every dollar earned gets turned into a bottom line profit. This is just one of many profitability metrics used by investors and analysts to better understand what the company is being left with at the end of the day. Generally, a company that can expand its net profit margins over a period of time will see its stock price rise as well due to the trend of increasing profitability. Net Margin = Net Income/Total Revenue.
Return on Assets (ROA) illustrates how much a company is generating in earnings from its assets alone. This metric gives investors a picture of how profitable the company is relative to the assets in current possession. As well, it lets investors see how efficient and effective management is at generating earnings from the company's assets. While most management teams can probably make money by throwing money at an issue, very few can make very large profits with little investment.
The Current ratio is a liquidity ratio used to determine a company's financial health. The metric illustrates how easily a firm can pay back its short obligations all at once through current assets. A company that has a current ratio of one or less is generally a liquidity red flag. Now this doesn't mean the company will go bankrupt tomorrow, but it also doesn't bode well for the company, and may indicate that it could have an issue paying back upcoming obligations.
The Quick ratio measures a company's ability to use its cash or assets to extinguish its current liabilities immediately. Quick assets include assets that presumably can be converted to cash at close to their book values. A company with a Quick Ratio of less than 1 cannot currently pay back its current liabilities. The quick ratio is more conservative than the Current Ratio because it excludes inventory from current assets, since some companies have difficulty turning their inventory into cash. If short-term obligations need to be paid off immediately, sometimes the current ratio would overestimate a company's short-term financial strength. In general, the higher the ratio, the greater the company's liquidity (i.e., the better able to meet current obligations using liquid assets).
We first looked for large cap technology dividend stocks. From here, we then looked for companies that have achieved strong bottom line profitability (Net Margin [TTM]>10%)(ROA > 10%). From here, we then looked for companies that have a substantial amount of cash on hand (Current Ratio>2)(Quick Ratio>2).
Do you think these large-cap stocks deserve to grow higher? Use our list along with your own analysis.
1) Agilent Technologies Inc. (A)
| Sector: | Technology |
| Industry: | Scientific & Technical Instruments |
| Market Cap: | $14.80B |
| Beta: | 1.53 |
Agilent Technologies Inc. has a Dividend yield of 0.94% and Net Margin of 15.58% and Return on Assets of 12.24% and Current Ratio of 3.35 and Quick Ratio of 2.80. The short interest was 1.63% as of 04/30/2012. Agilent Technologies, Inc. provides bio-analytical and electronic measurement solutions to the communications, electronics, life sciences, and chemical analysis industries worldwide. Its Electronic Measurement segment offers electronic measurement instruments and systems, and software design tools that are used in the design, development, manufacture, installation, deployment, and operation of electronics equipment and microscopy products. Its products consist of communications and general purpose test products.
2) Broadcom Corp. (BRCM)
| Sector: | Technology |
| Industry: | Semiconductor - Integrated Circuits |
| Market Cap: | $20.08B |
| Beta: | 1.25 |
Broadcom Corp. has a Dividend yield of 1.10% and Net Margin of 12.55% and Return on Assets of 10.92% and Current Ratio of 5.23 and Quick Ratio of 4.85. The short interest was 1.50% as of 04/30/2012. Broadcom Corporation designs and develops semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. It provides a portfolio of system-on-a-chip (SoC) and software solutions for the manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices, which enable the delivery of voice, video, data, and multimedia content to the home, office, and mobile environment.
The company's broadband communications products include cable modem SoCs; femtocell SoCs; MPEG/AVC/VC-1 encoders and transcoders; xDSL, passive optical network, and cable modem customer premises equipment and central office solutions; powerline networking SoCs; and digital cable, direct broadcast satellite, terrestrial, and Internet protocol (IP) set-top box integrated receiver demodulators. The company's mobile and wireless products comprise Wi-Fi and Bluetooth SoCs, wireless connectivity combo chips, global positioning system SoCs, multimedia processors, applications processors, power management units, VoIP SoCs, mobile TV SoCs, and near field communications tags.
3) Analog Devices Inc. (ADI)
| Sector: | Technology |
| Industry: | Semiconductor - Integrated Circuits |
| Market Cap: | $11.61B |
| Beta: | 1.08 |
Analog Devices Inc. has a Dividend yield of 3.08% and Net Margin of 26.94% and Return on Assets of 15.89% and Current Ratio of 8.82 and Quick Ratio of 8.23. The short interest was 1.32% as of 04/30/2012. Analog Devices, Inc. engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of analog, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing integrated circuits (ICS) used in industrial, automotive, consumer, and communication applications.
The company's signal processing products involve in converting, conditioning, and processing real-world phenomena, such as temperature, pressure, sound, light, speed, and motion into electrical signals. Its product range includes data converters, amplifiers and linear products, radio frequency ICs, power management products, sensors based on micro-electro mechanical systems technology and other sensors, and processing products.
4) Altera Corp. (ALTR)
| Sector: | Technology |
| Industry: | Semiconductor - Specialized |
| Market Cap: | $11.47B |
| Beta: | 1.14 |
Altera Corp. has a Dividend yield of 0.90% and Net Margin of 34.64% and Return on Assets of 15.82% and Current Ratio of 4.07 and Quick Ratio of 3.96. The short interest was 1.48% as of 04/30/2012. Altera Corporation, a semiconductor company, designs, manufactures, and markets programmable logic devices (PLD), HardCopy application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) devices, pre-defined design building blocks, and associated development tools.
The company's PLDs consist of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), which are standard semiconductor integrated circuits or chips to perform desired logic functions in the electronic systems; and HardCopy structured ASIC devices that comprise transition customer designs from high-density FPGAs to low-cost non-programmable implementations for volume production. Its products primarily include Stratix series high-end, system-level FPGAs; Arria series mid-range transceiver and embedded processor equipped FPGAs; Cyclone series low-cost transceiver and embedded processor equipped FPGAs; MAX series CPLDs; and HardCopy ASICs.
The company's products also comprise intellectual property cores in hard and soft forms that are pre-verified building blocks that execute system-level functions; and development tools consisting primarily of the Quartus II software for design entry, design compilation, design verification, and device programming.
*Company profiles were sourced from Finviz.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
