Stocks Offering Nice Dividends -- And Value

With bonds yielding so little, many investors have been looking for yield in the form of high-dividend stocks — which has made some of those picks rise to unattractive valuations. But in his latest article for Forbes.com, Validea CEO John Reese looks at some stocks that are offering nice dividends, and still trading at cheap valuations.

Reese refers to data that top fund manager Bill Nygren cited in a recent letter to shareholders. “Nygren points out that, historically, the top 100 dividend payers in the S&P [500] have collectively sold at a price/earnings ratio that is about three-quarters of the overall index’s P/E,” Reese says. “Right now, the high-dividend stocks not only aren’t trading at that discount; they’re actually more pricey than the broader index, which trades for about 13 times earnings, Nygren says.”

But, Reese adds, “That, however, doesn’t mean all high-dividend stocks are fully priced. I recently used my Validea.com Guru Strategies (which are based on the approaches of several different great investors, including Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham) to look for high-dividend plays whose shares are trading for less than 11 times earnings.” He found several, five of which he examines in the article. Among them: Southern Copper, which gets good marks from his Joel Greenblatt-based model.