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Should Value Investors Buy Sumitomo (SSUMY) Stock?

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While the proven Zacks Rank places an emphasis on earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find strong stocks, we also know that investors tend to develop their own individual strategies. With this in mind, we are always looking at value, growth, and momentum trends to discover great companies.

Of these, value investing is easily one of the most popular ways to find great stocks in any market environment. Value investors rely on traditional forms of analysis on key valuation metrics to find stocks that they believe are undervalued, leaving room for profits.

Luckily, Zacks has developed its own Style Scores system in an effort to find stocks with specific traits. Value investors will be interested in the system's "Value" category. Stocks with both "A" grades in the Value category and high Zacks Ranks are among the strongest value stocks on the market right now.

One company to watch right now is Sumitomo (SSUMY - Free Report) . SSUMY is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), as well as an A grade for Value. The stock holds a P/E ratio of 8, while its industry has an average P/E of 19.89. Over the past 52 weeks, SSUMY's Forward P/E has been as high as 8.08 and as low as 4.13, with a median of 5.34.

Value investors also use the P/S ratio. The P/S ratio is is calculated as price divided by sales. Some people prefer this metric because sales are harder to manipulate on an income statement. This means it could be a truer performance indicator. SSUMY has a P/S ratio of 0.56. This compares to its industry's average P/S of 0.98.

Finally, our model also underscores that SSUMY has a P/CF ratio of 5.14. This metric takes into account a company's operating cash flow and can be used to find stocks that are undervalued based on their solid cash outlook. This stock's P/CF looks attractive against its industry's average P/CF of 12.25. Within the past 12 months, SSUMY's P/CF has been as high as 5.14 and as low as 2.78, with a median of 3.97.

These figures are just a handful of the metrics value investors tend to look at, but they help show that Sumitomo is likely being undervalued right now. Considering this, as well as the strength of its earnings outlook, SSUMY feels like a great value stock at the moment.


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