Buy These 5 Low Leverage Stocks To Avoid Huge Losses

In corporate finance, leverage is the use of exogenous funds by corporations to run their operations smoothly and expand the same. While there is an option for equity financing, historically debt financing has been preferred over equity.

This is because when a company resorts to debt financing, it takes on fixed expenses in the form of interest payments for a specific time period. However, in case of equity financing, a shareholder not only becomes a partial owner of the company but develops a direct claim on the company’s future profits as well.

Yet, debt financing has its share of drawbacks. Especially, companies with large debt loads are more vulnerable during economic downturns and can even go bankrupt in the worst-case scenario. A high degree of financial leverage means high interest payments, which affect a company's bottom line.

Therefore, to safeguard one’s portfolio from notable losses, the real challenge for an investor is determining whether an organization’s debt level is sustainable. A debt-free corporation is rare to find. Historically several leverage ratios have been developed to measure the amount of debt a company bears and the debt-to-equity ratio is one of the most common ratios.

Analyzing Debt/Equity

Debt-to-Equity Ratio = Total Liabilities/Shareholders’ Equity

This metric is a liquidity ratio that indicates the amount of financial risk a company bears. A company with a lower debt-to-equity ratio shows improved solvency for a company.

With Q1 earnings in full form, investors must be eyeing companies that have exhibited solid earnings growth in the past couple of quarters. However, blindly pursuing high earnings yielding stocks, which have a high debt-to-equity ratio, might drain all your money before you know.

The Winning Strategy

Considering the aforementioned factors, it is prudent to choose stocks with a low debt-to-equity ratio to ensure steady returns.

However, an investment strategy based solely on the debt-to-equity ratio might not fetch the desired outcome. To choose stocks that have the potential to give you steady returns, we have expanded our screening criteria to include some other factors.

Here are the other parameters:

Debt/Equity less than X-Industry Median: Stocks that are less leveraged than their industry peers.

Current Price greater than or equal to 10: The stocks must be trading at a minimum of $10 or above.

Average 20-day Volume greater than or equal to 50000: A substantial trading volume ensures that the stock is easily tradable.

Percentage Change in EPS F(0)/F(-1) greater than X-Industry Median: Earnings growth adds to optimism, leading to a stock’s price appreciation.

Zacks Investment Research

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Written By: Zacks Investment Research