This is a great question for investors looking for a well-capitalized
company. There are many services available, though like your link
there's often a fee involved with up-to-date information. Many of
these services do offer 2-week or 30-day trials.
I've worked with databases such as the CRSP, University of Chicago's
Center for Research in Security Prices, but thought that it was time
to see what's available on the Internet.
Hoover's on-line service, which has a large database on public
companies available for free, also has a stock screener feature. It
allows you to pick a price/book value ratio in a range, which for your
example would be 0 to 1. It returns 2,074 companies -- along with the
price/book ratio:
http://www.hoovers.com/search/forms/stockscreener/
That leaves the question of finding a company with high cash value per
share. Companies with cash/share higher than stock price will be rare
because there's a special circumstance that flavors valuation (startup
with venture funding but no operations yet; cash transfer restricted
in a foreign currency; cash awaiting use in a transaction;
closely-held public company.) Cash-rich operating companies are
always an attractive takeover target.
An excellent guide to Internet sites with stock screening capabilities
is at Investorguide.com. Make sure that you check on "more sites" for
stock screening because there are links to interesting tools:
http://www.investorguide.com/stockscreen.html
None of the non-subscription services appear to track cash or
near-cash assets on balance sheets. They all try to find some way to
estimate a company's cash, because ultimately anticipated future cash
flows determine market value. The common ways to try to find
something else to determine cash are:
Current Ratio = current assets/current liabilities
Quick Ratio = (Cash + Cash Equivalents + Account Receivables)/Total
Current Liabilities
Cash flow = cash in/cash out
One of the grand old companies tracking stock ratios is Value Line,
http://www.valueline.com/
It also charges a fee, but the reason it gets special mention is that
nearly every U.S. library has a subscription to its printed research
reports. It's August 30, 2002 report lists 100 major capitalization
stocks with price-to-book value ratios are between 6% and 71%. Though
Value Line doesn't measure cash levels, it provides two other measure:
Bargain Basement stocks: best P-E and price-to-net working capital
(WC) ratios. WC = current assets minus all liabilities including
long-term debt. At the end of August there were only 11 of these.
Biggest 'Free Flow' Cash generators: stocks with high rations of cash
flow to capital/dividend expense. Value Line uses the free cash flow
over the past 5 years. The August report listed 100 such companies
with cash flow/cash out ratios between 3.67 and 53.
Also worth noting is that Value Line has a separate service which
tracks small capitalization stocks.
Among the free on-line stock screens that worked, here are some
interesting ones:
Multex investor runs a number of standard valuation screens, which are
downloadable into an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis:
http://www.marketguide.com/BuzzPage.asp?target=/stocks/advisor/home&DocID=6736
Stockpoint's screens allow use of current ratios (CA/CL) as its
nearest variable to cash. There are 311 companies with current ratios
higher than 10:
http://investor.stockpoint.com/leftnav/pages/stockfinderpro.asp?
Another good screening website, even though it doesn't have many
measures that are cash-related:
http://www.dailystocks.com/screen.htm
Kiplinger's page has a 22 ratios that you can examine for the entire
Russell 3000 list. "Price-to-cash flow" and "price to book value" are
both available. Best of all, this site is fast and easy to use:
http://www.kiplinger.com/russell/r3k-search.php3#customForm
Here's one that would seem to offer cash ratios to current stock
prices, but it doesn't seem to work properly:
http://www.stockselector.com/
In the process of doing the research, its clear that others are doing
similar valuation analyses in this bear market. Here are several
interesting articles from this year on finding cash-rich companies:
http://www.smartmoney.com/stockscreen/index.cfm?story=20020828intro
http://biz.yahoo.com/smart/020523/20020516introstocscre_8.html
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug2002/pi2002081_7719.htm
The Google search strategy:
stock + screen + cash
stock + screens + cash
stock + ratios + cash + book value
Good luck with the cash hunt! |
