As investors, we're always on the lookout for the best stocks at the lowest prices. Sure, we may struggle to find them during bull markets, when valuations become sky-high, but during more volatile periods it can be a little easier to pick up top notch companies for the long term.
And, with the ASX still struggling to make any notable gains in recent months, there seems to be a considerable number of shares that may be worth buying at the moment.
With this in mind, could these three stocks fall into that category and boost your returns this year?
Brambles Limited
One of the surprising aspects of Brambles Limited (ASX: BXB) is that, despite its earnings being around 11% lower last year than they were five years ago, investor sentiment in the company has picked up strongly during the period. In fact, Brambles has been an excellent stock to hold and has delivered an annualised shareholder return of 13.5% during the five-year period.
Looking ahead, there could be more excellent returns to come, since Brambles has a bright future. For example, it is forecast to increase its bottom line by 13.2% in the current financial year, which is around twice the wider market's growth rate. This should appeal to investors at a time when above average growth is seemingly more difficult to find, with many resource and financial stocks offering a less optimistic future. As such, Brambles could see investor sentiment pick up further and take its shares to even higher highs.
Crown Resorts Ltd
Shares in Crown Resorts Ltd (ASX: CWN) have endured a highly challenging period, with them having fallen by 30% in the last year. This is despite the company's earnings rising by an impressive 30.5% last year. This shows how investor sentiment can weaken significantly if future prospects appear to be less certain.
However, Crown Resorts is still forecast to deliver bottom line growth of 8% per annum over the next two years. If met, this would represent an encouraging performance and, while the nature of its business is relatively volatile, its current price to earnings growth (PEG) ratio of 1.7 seems to represent good value while the ASX has a PEG ratio of 1.95. As such, Crown Resorts could be worth buying right now.
QBE Insurance Group Ltd
Clearly, the last handful of years have been highly volatile for QBE Insurance Group Ltd (ASX: QBE). However, over the last 10 years the company has been able to grow its net asset value at an annualised rate of 5.1%, which given its lack of profitability in some of those years, appears to be rather impressive.
Of course, refinancing will have impacted upon that statistic to an extent but, with QBE trading at a substantial discount to the wider insurance sector based on its price to book (P/B) ratio, it could prove to be an excellent buy at the present time. For example, while the insurance sector has a P/B ratio of 1.95, QBE's is just 1.16, thereby indicating that there is room for this to expand.
Furthermore, with a considerable amount of restructuring and rationalisation still to come, this could be the start of a more prosperous period for QBE. As such, it could be worth buying right now.
