3 Reasons Why Growth Investors Shouldn't Overlook Avery Dennison (AVY)

Growth investors focus on stocks that are seeing above-average financial growth, as this feature helps these securities garner the market's attention and deliver solid returns. But finding a growth stock that can live up to its true potential can be a tough task.

By their very nature, these stocks carry above-average risk and volatility. Moreover, if a company's growth story is over or nearing its end, betting on it could lead to significant loss.

However, the task of finding cutting-edge growth stocks is made easy with the help of the Zacks Growth Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which looks beyond the traditional growth attributes to analyze a company's real growth prospects.

Avery Dennison (AVY) is one such stock that our proprietary system currently recommends. The company not only has a favorable Growth Score, but also carries a top Zacks Rank.

Research shows that stocks carrying the best growth features consistently beat the market. And returns are even better for stocks that possess the combination of a Growth Score of A or B and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy).

Here are three of the most important factors that make the stock of this maker of office products a great growth pick right now.

Earnings Growth

Arguably nothing is more important than earnings growth, as surging profit levels is what most investors are after. For growth investors, double-digit earnings growth is highly preferable, as it is often perceived as an indication of strong prospects (and stock price gains) for the company under consideration.

While the historical EPS growth rate for Avery Dennison is 2.2%, investors should actually focus on the projected growth. The company's EPS is expected to grow 6.6% this year, crushing the industry average, which calls for EPS growth of 1.5%.

Impressive Asset Utilization Ratio

Asset utilization ratio -- also known as sales-to-total-assets (S/TA) ratio -- is often overlooked by investors, but it is an important indicator in growth investing. This metric exhibits how efficiently a firm is utilizing its assets to generate sales.

Right now, Avery Dennison has an S/TA ratio of 1.03, which means that the company gets $1.03 in sales for each dollar in assets. Comparing this to the industry average of 0.74, it can be said that the company is more efficient.

In addition to efficiency in generating sales, sales growth plays an important role. And Avery Dennison looks attractive from a sales growth perspective as well. The company's sales are expected to grow 5.9% this year versus the industry average of 2.2%.

Promising Earnings Estimate Revisions

Superiority of a stock in terms of the metrics outlined above can be further validated by looking at the trend in earnings estimate revisions. A positive trend is of course favorable here. Empirical research shows that there is a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.

The current-year earnings estimates for Avery Dennison have been revising upward. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has surged 1.6% over the past month.

Bottom Line

Avery Dennison has not only earned a Growth Score of A based on a number of factors, including the ones discussed above, but it also carries a Zacks Rank #2 because of the positive earnings estimate revisions.

You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

This combination positions Avery Dennison well for outperformance, so growth investors may want to bet on it.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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