Forget Profit, Bet On 4 Stocks With Increasing Cash Flows

Big profits and earnings surprises can lure investors in any earnings season. But looking beyond them and figuring out a company’s cash position can be far more rewarding because that reveals its true financial health.

In fact, even a profit-making company can have a dearth of cash flow and succumb to failure if its profits are not channelized in the right direction. But a company with healthy cash flow can effectively tide over any market mayhem because cash gives it the flexibility to make decisions, the means to make potential investments and the fuel to run its growth engine. It offers vitality and strength and is indeed the key for company’s existence, development and success.

In any business, cash moves in and out, but it is net cash flow that explains how much money the company is actually making. A positive cash flow indicates an increase in the company’s liquid assets, which provide the means to meet debt obligations, shell out for expenses, reinvest in business, endure downturns and finally return wealth to shareholders. On the other hand, negative cash flow indicates a decline in the company’s liquidity and in turn lowers its flexibility to support these moves.

Yet, positive cash flow alone is not sufficient to predict a company’s future growth. A company can consistently grow only when positive cash flow is rising. Because increasing cash flow indicates management’s efficiency in regulating its cash movements and less dependency on outside financing for running the business and finally improving fundamentals.

Therefore, this earnings season, keep yourself ready with the following screen to bet on stocks with rising cash flows.

Screening Parameters:

To find stocks that have seen increasing cash flow over time, we ran the screen for those whose cash flow in the latest reported quarter was at least equal to or greater than the 5-year average cash flow per common share. This implies a positive trend and increasing cash over a period of time.

In addition to this we chose:

Zacks Rank 1: No matter whether market conditions are good or bad, stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) have a proven history of outperformance. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Average Broker Rating 1: This indicates that brokers are also highly hopeful about the company’s future performance.

Current Price greater than or equal to $5: This sieves out low-priced stocks.

VGM Score of B or better: This score is also of great assistance in selecting stocks. Importantly, this scoring system helps in picking winning stocks in their individual industry categories.

Here are four out of six stocks that qualified the screening:

BayerischeMotorenWerke AG BAMXF is a multi-brand automobile manufacturer that focuses on the premium segments of the worldwide automobile and motorcycle markets. It has three brands: BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce (LON:RR). The company is headquartered in Munich, Germany and has a VGM score of A.

The stock has witnessed solid positive estimate revisions with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 earnings increasing nearly 18.0% over the past 30 days.

Gray Television, Inc. (NYSE:GTN) is a communications company headquartered in Atlanta, GA. It presently owns and operates television stations as well as digital assets in markets across the U.S. The company has a VGM score of B. Moreover, 2017 earnings estimates have moved up by 2.2% over the past seven days to 93 cents.

Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A. (NASDAQ:GGAL) is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina and involved in the financial services industry. Grupo Galicia fully owns the outstanding shares of Banco Galicia, which is its most significant asset. The company has a VGM Score of B.

The stock also experienced solid estimate revisions, reflecting analysts’ bullishness. In fact, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 earnings has increased 3.4% over the past 60 days.

Spark New Zealand (OTC:SPKKY) , headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, provides digital services. It provides fixed line, mobile, and internet services, voice, interconnect, managed data, and international products and services and telecommunication services. The company has a VGM Score of B.

Spark has a long-term (3–5 years) expected growth rate of 8.3%. Also, the stock has witnessed positive estimate revisions with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2017 earnings increasing 6.8% 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.

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