Growth stocks are attractive to many investors, as above-average financial growth helps these stocks easily grab the market's attention and produce exceptional returns. But finding a growth stock that can live up to its true potential can be a tough task.
That's because, these stocks usually carry above-average risk and volatility. In fact, betting on a stock for which the growth story is actually over or nearing its end could lead to significant loss.
However, 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, makes it pretty easy to find cutting-edge growth stocks.
Kirkland Lake Gold (KL) is on the list of such stocks currently recommended by our proprietary system. In addition to a favorable Growth Score, it 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).
While there are numerous reasons why the stock of this gold producer is a great growth pick right now, we have highlighted three of the most important factors below:
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 Kirkland Lake Gold is 96.7%, investors should actually focus on the projected growth. The company's EPS is expected to grow 75.2% this year, crushing the industry average, which calls for EPS growth of 51.9%.
Impressive Asset Utilization Ratio
Growth investors often overlook asset utilization ratio, also known as sales-to-total-assets (S/TA) ratio, but it is an important feature of a real growth stock. This metric shows how efficiently a firm is utilizing its assets to generate sales.
Right now, Kirkland Lake Gold has an S/TA ratio of 0.6, which means that the company gets $0.6 in sales for each dollar in assets. Comparing this to the industry average of 0.26, it can be said that the company is more efficient.
In addition to efficiency in generating sales, sales growth plays an important role. And Kirkland Lake Gold looks attractive from a sales growth perspective as well. The company's sales are expected to grow 44.8% this year versus the industry average of 8.5%.