Wells Fargo (WFC) and Halliburton (HAL) headline a group of five dividend-paying Club stocks that are expected to post robust earnings growth this year. The bank and oilfield services firm jumped off the page in our latest screen of Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust, the portfolio we use for the Club. We wanted to see which holdings are projected to boost per-share earnings this year well above the roughly 2% earnings growth estimated for the overall S & P 500 . We sought to ensure they’re paying dividends, too, an important part of capital return strategies along with share repurchases. (We highlighted the Club’s buyback royalty last week.) Investors should also pay attention to valuation, so we excluded stocks trading above the S & P 500’s multiple of 18 times forward earnings. (Calculating a forward price-to-earnings ratio, a common valuation metric used by investors to compare stocks, starts with a company’s stock price or an index level and then dividing it by the next 12 months earnings-per-share estimates.) The full list of stocks that passed this screening test: Wells Fargo, Halliburton, Cisco Systems (CSCO), Caterpillar (CAT) and Morgan Stanley (MS) Before we get into some commentary on each, here are the full parameters we used for this analysis as of the close after Tuesday’s Federal Reserve-driven selloff. Calendarized 2023 EPS growth of at least 10%. Current dividend yield above 1% Forward price-to-earnings ratio of 18 or below. Note: For this story, we used calendarized earnings and estimates – meaning, we compared what a company earned in calendar 2022 to what Wall Street expects it to earning in calendar 2023. Because companies follow different fiscal years – many end in December, but some end in June and others in January or September – this approach offer some standardization. This allowed for better comparison to Wall Street’s 2023 estimates for S & P 500 earnings. 1. Wells Fargo Estimated 2023 EPS growth: 50.7% Dividend yield: 2.7% Forward P/E: 9.4 WFC 1Y mountain Wells Fargo’s stock price over the past 12 months. Bank stocks came under pressure Tuesday. However, we like Wells Fargo over the long term, believing the bank’s turnaround efforts under CEO Charlie Scharf will continue to create value. More immediately, management’s expense discipline is poised to support earnings this year, on top of the benefit Wells Fargo receives from higher interest rates. Wells Fargo’s dividend rewards investors for their patience, plus its buyback was restarted this quarter. We have a buy-it-here 1 rating on Wells Fargo. The average price target from analysts covering the stock represents a 20% gain from Tuesday’s close of $44.45 per share. 2. Halliburton Estimated 2023 EPS growth: 41.02% Dividend yield: 1.7% Forward P/E: 12.43 HAL 1Y mountain Halliburton’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Demand for Halliburton’s services is robust following years of underinvestment in drilling capacity, which helps give the company…
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