20 Cheapest Large Cap Buyback Opportunities

It’s that time of year again — the time of year when companies ramp-up their stock buyback activity as they realize they’ll have enough cash to fund those efforts, and/or just to make sure they reach their internal buyback goals.

When corporations are profitable and established, they tend to return capital to shareholders. This can be achieved via stock buybacks to shrink the float and to support the stock, or it can be done via one-time dividends or by raising their annualized quarterly dividends. Both are activities I do cover on this blog on a regular basis.

Many investors love the cash flow from dividends. After all, dividends can contribute up to 50% of total returns through time. Other investors prefer for companies to buy back their common stock. But a good alternative is to combine both shareholder friendly activities.

When picking out companies that will be buying back the largest number of shares in 2016, several things have to be considered. First and foremost, a company had to be willing to spend billions of dollars to buy its shares. Such companies also have to have a history of conducting stock buybacks, or they had to have a solid reason why they would be so aggressive in buying back stock this year alone.

As for which stocks are particularly well-positioned to be the beneficiaries of corporate buyback efforts, investors may want to put the following names on their radar. Attached you will find a selection of the 20 cheapest large cap stocks with a buyback announcement during the past 12 month.

These are the results...

14 Attractively Valued Healthcare Sector Dividend Growth Stocks

Healthcare stocks have generally been poor performers in calendar year 2016. I suggest that this weak performance, especially relative to high-quality, fundamentally sound healthcare stocks, can be somewhat attributable to political uncertainty regarding the future of healthcare.

On the other hand, political uncertainty manifesting in 2016 could also be looked at as the catalyst that is bringing healthcare stocks that were overvalued in 2015 down to fundamentally justified levels.

Below are 14 examples that I consider worthy of current consideration and a more comprehensive research and due diligence effort.

These 14 dividend growth healthcare stocks are currently trading at very attractive fundamental valuations. As a result, they all reflect high earnings and cash flow yields. 

This implies that their valuations are attractive relative to their fundamental values. The following portfolio review lists them in order of highest current dividend yield to lowest.

Each of the results has a low forward P/E under 15 with solid earnings growth perspectives.

Here are the results...

16 Oversold Dividend Stocks Are Now Cheap Enough To Buy Now

As the markets reached recently fresh new highs, income investors are on the lookout for stocks with solid dividend yields that have strong fundamentals and are oversold due to the year's volatility. 

It's hard to find cheaply priced stocks in such a hot priced environment.

Looking at the stocks' technical charts can help determine whether the fundamentals can be further supported. 

Not surprisingly, this year's market volatility has wreaked havoc on many strong dividend stocks. 

Today we've screened the market by cheap stocks (forward P/E under 15) with an oversold definition by RSI 40.

We also excluded all stocks with a market capitalization over 2 billion. In addition, the ROA is positive and the debt-to equity under 1.

16 stocks are meeting the above mentioned criteria of which 2 a High-Yields.

These are the results in detail...

A Portfolio Of Stocks With A High Domestic Sales Share

A Portfolio Of Stocks With A High Domestic Sales Share (click to enlarge),
Source: Goldman Sach, MarketWatch

Cracking The Best Healthcare Dividend Stock Secret

This Weekend my eyes and thoughts curved around the Healthcare sector. 

I read several interesting articles from the sector, mostly about the biotech’s and new Hepatitis C drugs from Gilead, Sovaldi and Harvoni.

Those are very expensive drugs with potential to kill the current medical systems but they also generate tons of cash for their corporate.

I also noticed that the Healthcare sector grows at a much faster pace than the economy does, with 10+ percent. How can you benefit from this trend? I don't know. Prices are high, even on free cash flow basis.

Second, the old synthetic drug cash cow system from Pfizer doesn't work anymore. PFE is losing revenues. Even Teva, a generic drug manufacturer, struggles.

In order to get an overview about modest valuated growth stocks from the Healthcare sector, I've created a screen for large capitalized sector members with the following main criteria:

- EPS growth next five years: over 5 percent

- Sales growth past five years: over 5 percent

- Forward P/E under 20

- Positive Dividend

14 attractive healthcare growth stocks remain. It's a very selective list with focus on sales and earnings growth. You can find the full results attached. 

You may also interested in my older articles about healthcare dividend stocks.

Below are also five of my favorites. Which stocks do you like? Please let me know.

16 Large Caps With Skyrocket Dividends

Dividend growth is important, no discussion about that. Many analysts and investors say that a fast growing dividend is a result of a rosy business which runs very well.

Others research studies say that high dividend raiser perform better than the market.

However, I like to show you which large capitalized stocks increased their dividends over the past year at the highest rate, more than 50 percent.

Purchasing high growth is better than buying high yielding stocks. A list Dividend Aristocrats with the fastest dividend growth rates can be found here: 10 Dividend Aristocrats With The Highest Possibility To Grow Dividends At The Fastest Pace...

You can find the full list at the end of this post. I hope you get some new inspirations which help you to structure your investments. Thank you for reading and commenting.

If you would like to receive more dividend stock ideas, you should subscribe to my free e-mail list. Alternatively, you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

These are my favorite stocks...

17 High Momentum Healthcare Dividend Stocks

Healthcare dividend stocks with highest beta ratios originally published at long-term-investments.blogspot.com. You know that I am a conservative investor and try to minimize my risk.

This strategy is necessary if you have a larger amount of money to take care of or you begin to cry when you lose 10 percent on your book value. The second disadvantage is that you lose performance in a strong up moving market. 

Since 2009, there were nearly no bigger corrections at the market but with low beta and safe haven stocks, your performance would be only half of the return from the markets. What you need to get a push for your portfolio is a high beta stock. I don’t recommend buying them because it’s a definitely riskier strategy and nobody knows when the market turns into a bearish mood.

However, let’s take a look at the high fly momentum stocks from the healthcare sector. Those are stocks with the highest beta ratio from the sector. They have a beta between 1 and 2. With focus on the dividend paying stocks, only 17 stocks from the healthcare sector pay a dividend and being correlated with the market by a factor of up to 2.

One High-Yield is below the results and 16 have a current buy or better rating by brokerage firms.

Half-Time Report: The Best Healthcare Dividend Stocks And Which Of Them Are The Cheapest

Healthcare dividend stocks with the highest year-to-date performance originally published at "long-term-investments.blogspot.com". We’ve completed the month June and it’s time to report which stocks have risen most within the first six months of the year. It’s ever good to see which stocks are hot in the market and which of them are still cheap valuated.

That’s the main reason why I like to produce an article serial with performance figures of the best performing stocks from several sectors of the financial market.

Today I like to screen the healthcare sector by dividend stocks with the highest stock performance since the beginning of the year.

The 20 most successful companies have realized a performance between 22.01 percent and 73.98 percent. The average capital gain was 36.24 percent. Despite the strong stock price hike, seventeen of them still have a buy or better rating.

The Best And Most Recommended Healthcare Stocks For 2013

Herbalife (HLF)
Best Yielding Healthcare Stock

Best Healthcare stocks with buy ratings originally published at "long-term-investments.blogspot.com". This month I like to discover the best recommended stocks from all sectors at the capital market. I like to start with the healthcare sector, one of the biggest ones. Here are some facts for our statistical lovers:

The healthcare sector has 540 companies with a health related business model. The total market capitalization of all stocks is 64.5 trillion. Stocks from the healthcare sector have an average P/E ratio of 20.78 and they pay in average a dividend yield of 3.37 percent. The best dividend paying industries are major drug manufactures and Biotechnology companies. Biotech’s are now the second best yielding category with an average industry yield of 2.13 percent.

Below is a small list with some fundamentals about the most recommended higher capitalized stocks from the healthcare sector. I excluded stocks with a market capitalization below USD 2 billion because I think the risk should be much higher as for mid-capitalized stocks.

These are the results: Nine of the 20 best rated stocks pay dividends. Half of the results are large caps and all stocks have positive expected mid-term earnings per share growth. Yes, healthcare is still a growth opportunity.

My Best Healthcare Stock Picks For 2013 | Last Year’s Picks Gained 31.55%

Last year at this time, I made a screen of some stocks from the healthcare sector with an interesting market valuation, a great past growth performance as well as good earnings situation. The stocks had a forward P/E of less than 15, a sales growth over the recent five years of more than 10 percent as well as an operating margin over 10 percent. Exactly seven stocks fulfilled these criteria at that time. Today I like to review these picks and try to discover a new list of potential stocks for next year, 2013. 

Over the recent year the Dow Jones Index is up 8.36 percent, the S&P 500 gained 13.82 percent and the NASDAQ is 14.58 percent higher. My seven healthcare picks from last year performed in average 31.55 percent while the healthcare sector summarized a total gain of 25.7 percent. Below is a current screen of the seven picks with performance figures.

Performance Review Of The Healthcare Picks 2012 (Click to enlarge)

The bad news for me is that I don't have invested in one of them. Now I try to make a similar screen with attractive price ratios. The only new restrictions are simple. I allow lower capitalized stocks (over USD 2 billion market capitalization) and introduce a new barrier in terms of earnings growth. I want mid-term (next five years) earnings per share growth of more than 5 percent. Thirteen companies remain.

12 Healthcare Dividend Stocks With Gaining Earnings Momentum

Healthcare Dividend Stocks With Accelerated Growth Researched By Dividend Yield - Stock, Capital, Investment. Growth stocks are wonderful especially if they are at the beginning of their growth path. Growth normally creates shareholder value and if the company doesn’t need much money to finance the growth, you can benefit already within the early stage.

I screened the healthcare sector by stocks with a recent earnings growth of more than ten percent (past five years). In order to catch up only those stocks with a gaining earnings growth, I observed only stocks with a quarter over quarter sales and earnings per share growth of more than 10 percent. Exactly twelve companies fulfilled these criteria. All of them are recommended to buy.