Should Value Investors Buy Crawford Company (CRD.B) Stock?

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, perhaps no stock market trend is more popular than value investing, which is a strategy that has proven to be successful in all sorts of market environments. Value investors use fundamental analysis and traditional valuation metrics to find stocks that they believe are being undervalued by the market at large.

In addition to the Zacks Rank, investors looking for stocks with specific traits can utilize our Style Scores system. Of course, value investors will be most interested in the system's "Value" category. Stocks with "A" grades for Value and high Zacks Ranks are among the best value stocks available at any given moment.

One company to watch right now is Crawford Company (CRD.B). CRD.B is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), as well as a Value grade of A. The stock is trading with P/E ratio of 13.44 right now. For comparison, its industry sports an average P/E of 18.86. Over the past year, CRD.B's Forward P/E has been as high as 14.48 and as low as 7.42, with a median of 11.15.

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. CRD.B has a P/S ratio of 0.41. This compares to its industry's average P/S of 0.55.

These are only a few of the key metrics included in Crawford Company's strong Value grade, but they help show that the stock is likely undervalued right now. When factoring in the strength of its earnings outlook, CRD.B looks like an impressive value stock at the moment.

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