VIRT or BAM: Which Is the Better Value Stock Right Now?

Investors interested in stocks from the Financial - Miscellaneous Services sector have probably already heard of Virtu Financial (VIRT) and Brookfield Asset Management (BAM). But which of these two stocks offers value investors a better bang for their buck right now? We'll need to take a closer look.

There are plenty of strategies for discovering value stocks, but we have found that pairing a strong Zacks Rank with an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system produces the best returns. The proven Zacks Rank emphasizes companies with positive estimate revision trends, and our Style Scores highlight stocks with specific traits.

Virtu Financial has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), while Brookfield Asset Management has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now. The Zacks Rank favors stocks that have recently seen positive revisions to their earnings estimates, so investors should rest assured that VIRT has an improving earnings outlook. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.

Value investors also tend to look at a number of traditional, tried-and-true figures to help them find stocks that they believe are undervalued at their current share price levels.

Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.

VIRT currently has a forward P/E ratio of 9.71, while BAM has a forward P/E of 25.48. We also note that VIRT has a PEG ratio of 0.40. This popular figure is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also considers a company's expected EPS growth rate. BAM currently has a PEG ratio of 1.79.

Another notable valuation metric for VIRT is its P/B ratio of 4.65. The P/B ratio pits a stock's market value against its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, BAM has a P/B of 8.91.

These metrics, and several others, help VIRT earn a Value grade of B, while BAM has been given a Value grade of D.

VIRT has seen stronger estimate revision activity and sports more attractive valuation metrics than BAM, so it seems like value investors will conclude that VIRT is the superior option right now.

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

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