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Is The Greenbrier Companies (GBX) a Great Value Stock Right Now?

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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 use fundamental analysis and traditional valuation metrics to find stocks that they believe are being undervalued by the market at large.

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 The Greenbrier Companies (GBX - Free Report) . GBX is currently holding a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy) and a Value grade of A. The stock is trading with P/E ratio of 11.35 right now. For comparison, its industry sports an average P/E of 16.33. Over the past 52 weeks, GBX's Forward P/E has been as high as 14.07 and as low as 10.06, with a median of 11.92.

We should also highlight that GBX has a P/B ratio of 1.23. The P/B ratio is used to compare a stock's market value with its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. This stock's P/B looks solid versus its industry's average P/B of 2.62. Over the past year, GBX's P/B has been as high as 1.40 and as low as 0.92, with a median of 1.07.

Value investors also love the P/S ratio, which is calculated by simply dividing a stock's price with the company's sales. This is a prefered metric because revenue can't really be manipulated, so sales are often a truer performance indicator. GBX has a P/S ratio of 0.54. This compares to its industry's average P/S of 1.5.

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


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