Based on key financial metrics such as the price-to-sales ratio, shareholder yield and the price-earnings ratio, the following 3 stocks made the list for top value stocks in the Software industry. Those looking for value stocks to add to their portfolio may want to use this list as a starting point for further investment research.

Why Focus on Undervalued Software Stocks?

Value investors seek to buy stocks at a discount to their intrinsic value. Long-term returns show that such strategies are advantageous. Value stocks, as a group, tend to outperform growth stocks over extended periods of time. Typically, value investors perform financial analysis of numerous metrics, don’t follow the herd and are long-term investors.

AAII’s A+ Investor Value Grade is derived from a stock’s Value Score. The Value Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of the price-to-sales ratio, price-earnings ratio, enterprise-value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) ratio, shareholder yield, price-to-book-value ratio and price-to-free-cash-flow ratio. The score is variable, meaning it can consider all six ratios or, should any of the six ratios not be valid, the remaining ratios that are valid. To be assigned a Value Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) ratio and corresponding ranking for at least two of the six valuation ratios.

What Goes Into AAII’s Value Grade?

Stock evaluation requires access to huge amounts of data as well as the knowledge and time to sift through it all, make sense of financial ratios, read income statements and analyze recent stock movement. AAII created A+ Investor, a robust data suite that condenses data research in an actionable and customizable way suitable for investors of all knowledge levels, to help investors with that task.

AAII’s proprietary stock grades come with A+ Investor. These offer intuitive A–F grades for more than just value. It is possible for a stock to appear cheap based on one valuation metric but appear expensive on another. It is also possible for one valuation ratio to be associated with outperforming stocks during certain periods of time but not others. Some stocks may even have null values for certain metrics like the price-earnings ratio or the price-to-book ratio but not others. An example of this would be a company with losses instead of profits or a negative book value because of heavy borrowing. Negative earnings or book value result in non-meaningful ratios that are left blank or null.

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3 Undervalued Software Stocks

Of course, there are countless value stocks that are worth mentioning, but this is a concise list of the top 3 undervalued stocks in the Software industry for Thursday, November 21, 2024. Let’s take a closer look at their individual scores to see how they measure up against each other and the Software industry median.

The Value Grade is assigned based on how each stock’s composite valuation compares to all other stocks.

The process for assigning grades starts with each variable for a given stock. The percentile rankings for all valid ratios that a stock has are calculated. So, for instance, a stock could have a price-to-book ranking in the 43rd percentile, a price-earnings ranking in the 67th percentile, a price-to-sales ranking in the 23rd percentile, etc. Then, those rankings are averaged for each stock. (A minimum of two valid variables are required, though all six will be used if available.)

Once the average of the individual variables is calculated, that average is ranked against all stocks. Put another way, each stock’s composite valuation is compared to all other stocks. These ranks are then sorted into quintiles from the cheapest 20% (a grade of A) to the most expensive 20% (a grade of F).

As always, we recommend that you conduct proper due diligence and research before investing in any security. We also suggest that investors utilize numerous grades, not just value, when it comes to deciding whether a company is a good fit for their allocation needs.

Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s Value Grade

Value Grade:

Cheetah Mobile Inc. along with its subsidiaries, engages in provision of internet services, artificial intelligence, and other services in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Japan, and internationally. The company’s internet products include Duba Anti-virus, an internet security application to protect users against known and unknown security threats and malicious applications; and Clean Master, a junk file cleaning, memory boosting, and privacy protection tool for mobile devices. It also offers value-added products, such as PC and mobile products, as well as wallpaper, office optimization software, and others; E-Coupon vending robot, a delivery and reception robot, which includes marketing campaigns and services; and multi-cloud management platform and overseas advertising agency service. In addition, the company provides mobile advertising services; duba.com personal start page that aggregates online resources and provides users access to their online destinations, such as online shopping, video, online game, travel, and local information; artificial intelligence and other services; and premium membership services. It serves mobile advertising networks and partners, e-commerce companies, mobile application developers, and mobile game developers, as well as individual customers. The company was formerly known as Kingsoft Internet Software Holdings Limited and changed its name to Cheetah Mobile Inc. in March 2014. Cheetah Mobile Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is based in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China.

Stocks with a Value Score from 81 to 100 are considered deep value, those with a score between 61 and 80 are value and so on.

Cheetah Mobile Inc. has a Value Score of 87, which is considered to be undervalued.

When you look at Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s price-to-sales ratio at 0.19 compared to the industry median at 4.28, this company has a lower price relative to revenue compared to its peers. This could make Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s stock more attractive for value investors.

Now, let’s assess Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s EV/EBITDA ratio, also known as enterprise multiple. At 9.1, when compared to the industry median of 26.1, the company may be considered undervalued in relation to its peers. Value investors could use the enterprise multiple to identify stocks that are considered overvalued or undervalued relative to their industry.

Shareholder yield is the sum of a stock’s dividend yield (paid over previous 12 months minus special dividends) and the percentage of net share buybacks over the previous 12 months. Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s shareholder yield is higher than its industry median ratio of (2.80%). Value investors may look for an attractive shareholder yield because it can be a powerful tool for identifying if the company has a good management team.

As one of the most common value metrics, the price-to-book ratio evaluates a company’s current market price relative to its book value. Cheetah Mobile Inc.’s price-to-book ratio is lower than its industry median ratio of 4.25. This could make Cheetah Mobile Inc. more attractive to investors looking for a new addition to their portfolio.

Dropbox, Inc.’s Value Grade

Value Grade:

Dropbox, Inc. provides a content collaboration platform worldwide. The company’s platform allows individuals, families, teams, and organizations to collaborate and sign up for free through its website or app, as well as upgrade to a paid subscription plan for premium features. It serves customers in professional services, technology, media, education, industrial, consumer and retail, and financial services industries. The company was formerly known as Evenflow, Inc. and changed its name to Dropbox, Inc. in October 2009. Dropbox, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Stocks with a Value Score from 81 to 100 are considered deep value, those with a score between 61 and 80 are value and so on.

Dropbox, Inc. has a Value Score of 61, which is considered to be undervalued.

Dropbox, Inc.’s price-earnings ratio is 15.3 compared to the industry median at 42.3. This means that it has a lower price relative to its earnings compared to its peers. This makes Dropbox, Inc. more attractive for value investors.

You can read more about Dropbox, Inc.’s key financial metrics like shareholder yield, price-to-free-cash-flow and EV/EBITDA ratio, or learn more about its Momentum and Growth Grades, by subscribing to A+ Investor.

Open Text Corporation’s Value Grade

Value Grade:

Open Text Corporation engages in the provision of information management products and services. The company offers content services, including content collaboration and intelligent capture to records management, collaboration, e-signatures, and archiving; and operates experience cloud platform that provides customer experience and web content management, digital asset management, customer analytics, AI and insights, e-discovery, digital fax, omnichannel communications, secure messaging, and voice of customer, as well as customer journey, testing, and segmentation. It also provides cybersecurity cloud solutions to protect, prevent, detect, respond, and quickly recover from threats across endpoints, network, applications, IT infrastructure and data, AI-led threat intelligence; and to protect critical information and processes through threat intelligence, forensics, identity, encryption, and cloud-based application security. In addition, the company offers business network cloud for digital supply chains and secure e-commerce ecosystems including digitize and automate procure-to-pay and order-to-cash processes; IT operations management cloud for automation and advancement of IT support and asset management; analytics and AI cloud solutions that offers artificial intelligence with practical usage to provide organizations with actionable insights and better automation, such as visualizations, advanced natural language processing and understanding, and integrated computer vision capabilities; and provides application automation cloud, developers cloud, and services. Further, it has strategic partnerships with SAP SE, Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Salesforce.com Corporation, DXC Technology Company, Accenture plc, Capgemini Technology Services SAS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, and Tata Consultancy Services. The company was incorporated in 1991 and is headquartered in Waterloo, Canada.

Stocks with a Value Score from 81 to 100 are considered deep value, those with a score between 61 and 80 are value and so on.

Open Text Corporation has a Value Score of 68, which is considered to be undervalued.

Open Text Corporation’s price-earnings ratio is 16.7 compared to the industry median at 42.3. This means that it has a lower price relative to its earnings compared to its peers. This makes Open Text Corporation more attractive for value investors.

Open Text Corporation’s price-to-book ratio is higher than its peers. This could make Open Text Corporation less attractive for value investors when compared to the industry median at 4.25.

You can read more about Open Text Corporation’s key financial metrics like shareholder yield, price-to-free-cash-flow and EV/EBITDA ratio, or learn more about its Momentum and Growth Grades, by subscribing to A+ Investor.

Other Software Stock Grades

Value is just one of the five Stock Grades included in our A+ Investor service. AAII members can see the top-graded stocks—those with grades of A or B for value, growth, momentum, earnings estimate revisions and quality—on the A+ Stock Grades Screener.

Also, if you want full access to all of AAII’s premium services, you can subscribe to one convenient bundled plan called AAII Platinum where you can try out A+ Investor, AAII Dividend Investing, the Stock Superstars Report, Growth Investing and VMQ Stocks. With the other premium services, you can dive deep into additional metrics, portfolios, commentary and information about Software stocks as well as other industrys.

Choosing Which of the 3 Best Software Stocks Is Right for You

Choosing which value stocks to invest in will ultimately depend on your individual goals and allocation; however, comparing similar value stocks in the same industry can help you analyze which might be better investments for you in the long run. So, let’s take a look at the Value Grade for all of our stocks.

• Cheetah Mobile Inc. stock has a Value Grade of A.
• Dropbox, Inc. stock has a Value Grade of B.
• Open Text Corporation stock has a Value Grade of B.

Now that you have a bit more background about each of the 3 undervalued stocks in the Software industry as well as their overall grades, it’s time for you to conduct additional research to see if these could fit your portfolio needs based on your goals and risk tolerance. AAII can help you figure out both and identify which investments align with what works best for you.

We do so through a program of education that teaches you to invest for yourself and become an effective manager of your own wealth—no more relying on others for your financial independence. You can rely on AAII for timeless articles on financial planning and stock-picking, unbiased research and actionable analysis that makes you a better investor.

A+ Investor adds to that qualitative teaching by giving you a powerful data suite that helps you whittle down investment decisions to find stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds that meet your needs.

Additional Resources About Software Stocks

Want to learn more about Software stocks to see if they could be the right investment for you? Check out some additional resources and articles to help you on your financial journey.

• 3 Undervalued Software Stocks for Thursday, November 21
• 5 Undervalued Software Stocks for Wednesday, November 20
• 7 Undervalued Software Stocks for Tuesday, November 19
• 3 Undervalued Software Stocks for Monday, November 18

AAII Disclaimer

We make no representations or warranties that any investor will, or is likely to, achieve profits similar to those shown, because past, hypothetical or simulated performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Before making an investment decision, you should consider your circumstances and whether the information on our content is applicable to your situation. This information was prepared in good faith and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions. The full disclaimer can be read here.