If I asked you to describe the ideal company, what would you say? No, no, I'm not asking you to tick off your favorite members of the Fortune 500 or some up-and-comer small cap that you've just discovered. I want you to think about the characteristics you'd give a company if you could dream it right into existence.
Would it be in a particular industry? Would it be services or product based? Would it have fat profit margins or would it make its money by doing a huge volume?
We could spend all day going over the details of this Galatea of the business world, but I would guess that there is at least one aspect that we'd all include in our creation -- growth. All those other details are great, but how interesting can a business be if it's stagnating and lacks avenues for expansion?
Turning back to reality, I have dug up a handful of companies that actually exist and are expected to post significant growth in the years to come. These companies may not all be the picture of perfection, but I've also consulted the 135,000 members of the Motley Fool's CAPS community to get an idea of which are our best bets.
Company
Expected Long-Term Growth
TTM Price-to-Earnings Ratio
CAPS Rating
(out of 5)
Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI)
18%
NM
*****
Bed Bath & Beyond (Nasdaq: BBBY)
14%
18
**
Garmin (Nasdaq: GRMN)
13%
7
****
NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX)
12%
NM
*****
Nike (NYSE: NKE)
12%
17
****
Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, Yahoo! Finance, and CAPS. TTM = trailing 12 months. NM = not meaningful.
While these aren't meant to be formal recommendations, they could be a great place to kick off further research. In fact, let's dig in a bit further on a favorite of the CAPS community, Activision Blizzard.
Fueling the growth
Video games in a recession? Am I crazy? Maybe I'm crazy enough to be on to something.
I'm certainly not the first investor to consider the fact that recessionary times mean that consumers are looking to cut back their entertainment budgets. But where do you make those cuts? The full setup for Activision's Guitar Hero may be pricey, but a few rock sessions combined with home-cooked dinners and you and your friends could save a boatload over doing a similar number of on-the-town dinner-and-movie combos.
In short, perhaps consumers are getting creative about how they stretch their entertainment money.
Activision certainly isn't without competition when it comes to attracting this spending. Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) and its EA Sports powerhouse and Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq: TTWO) with the Grand Theft Auto franchise are just two among the host of companies competing for video game supremacy.
But Activision towers above those other companies, thanks in large part to smash hits like the aforementioned Guitar Hero series, along with World of Warcraft (a Blizzard creation), Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty.
And as Activision continues to grow, it's packing an increasing amount of clout in the industry -- just ask Sony about that.
Perfection or poser?
It's a pretty bold statement to award a stock the descriptor "perfect," but the members of the CAPS community seem to think that Activision's stock at least comes close. To date, 4,268 members have logged their opinion on the stock, and 4,175 of those ratings have been "outperform."
To get a better idea as to why CAPS members have favored this stock, let's listen in on why RCollier22 recently gave the stock a thumbs-up:
Lots of cash, low debt, and a pipeline consitently full of upcoming games from the biggest and best gaming series that dominate many different game genres in both console (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii) and computer gaming markets make this one an easy pick.
I've already given Activision's stock a thumbs-up in my own CAPS portfolio, so now I want to know what you think. Share your thoughts in the comments section below or, better still, head over to CAPS and share your opinion with the entire CAPS community.
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