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30 Efficient, Dividend Paying Companies With Cheap Stock Prices

Oct. 14, 2011 11:02 AM ETCG, STRA, PETS, AMAT, LPS, PDLI, USPH, ATGE, MKSI, KLAC, UTIW, GNI, LINC, CATO, UNTD, DLX, EME, TNH, MSFT, ADI, CTCM, NOC, FCX, SPOK, GD, ASEI, GTN, CMTL, GPS, INTC
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Dividend stocks are a portfolio anchor in turbulent investing times, as 2011 has surely been. These stocks provide steady income returns, many at rates much higher than Treasury bonds, with the added bonuses of capital appreciation potential and the ability to raise their dividend payments over the years.

Joel Greenblatt's Magic Formula Investing (MFI) strategy can be used to target attractive dividend stocks. It simply ranks the entire stock universe by two simple metrics: earnings yield to find companies selling at low multiples to their profits, and return on capital to find companies that earn those profits efficiently. The resulting list of stocks are high quality and selling cheaply in the market. Who can argue against buying those characteristics?

In this article, I want to take it a step farther and throw out firms that do not pay a regular dividend. Doing this, we automatically get rid of highly volatile and unpreditable companies, leaving the steady income generators that pay their shareholders in cash. Their cheap stock prices allow us the potential for capital appreciation on top of dividend payments, and also can lock us in at dividend yields that may be higher than usual. And, since these are all highly capital efficient companies, the cash they generate can often be put to use in raising the dividend in the future.

The table below lists the top 30 dividend paying stocks over 50 million market cap, ranked in the Magic Formula fashion (using MagicDiligence's screener). There are, of course, some rather unstable dividend payers in this list. For example, PDL BioPharma (PDLI) and Great Northern (GNI) are essentually annuity companies, with a set point in the near future where they will go out of business by design. By and large, though, most of these companies have proven to be stable dividend payers well worth a look by income-focused investors:

Ticker Company DivYield EY ROIC Rank
MANT ManTech International Corporation 2.5% 28.0% 121.1% 1
STRA Strayer Education, Inc. 4.7% 18.2% 139.0% 2
PETS PetMed Express, Inc. 5.3% 19.9% 110.7% 3
AMAT Applied Materials, Inc. 2.9% 23.9% 76.3% 4
LPS Lender Processing Services, Inc. 2.6% 17.8% 106.4% 5
PDLI PDL BioPharma, Inc. 10.9% 16.4% 124.5% 6
USPH U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc. 1.6% 15.0% 157.4% 7
DV DeVry Inc. 0.6% 17.9% 97.5% 8
MKSI MKS Instruments, Inc. 2.6% 27.8% 63.5% 9
KLAC KLA-Tencor Corporation 3.3% 18.8% 86.5% 10
UTIW UTi Worldwide Inc. 0.4% 22.7% 66.2% 11
GNI Great Northern Iron Ore Properties 15.5% 13.6% 223.5% 12
LINC Lincoln Educational Services Corporation 11.3% 41.9% 55.5% 13
CATO The Cato Corporation 3.7% 19.5% 71.0% 14
UNTD United Online, Inc. 7.1% 14.3% 135.3% 15
DLX Deluxe Corporation 4.5% 15.1% 112.4% 16
EME EMCOR Group, Inc. 0.9% 16.5% 80.6% 17
TNH Terra Nitrogen Co. LP 9.5% 12.8% 313.9% 18
MSFT Microsoft Corporation 3.0% 13.8% 132.8% 19
ADI Analog Devices Inc. 2.9% 13.8% 124.5% 20
CTCM CTC Media, Inc. 11.3% 13.3% 138.0% 21
NOC Northrop Grumman Corporation 3.6% 18.2% 64.1% 22
FCX Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. 2.8% 33.9% 49.8% 23
USMO USA Mobility, Inc. 7.3% 17.8% 62.6% 24
GD General Dynamics Corporation 3.1% 16.2% 69.4% 25
ASEI American Science and Engineering, Inc. 1.8% 15.1% 74.5% 26
MDP Meredith Corporation 4.2% 16.2% 63.0% 27
CMTL Comtech Telecommunications Corp. 3.4% 13.7% 95.5% 28
GPS The Gap, Inc. 2.6% 19.8% 51.8% 29
ALTR Altera Corporation 0.9% 11.6% 286.5% 30

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