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 tremendous pricing power to boost profitability. “Our completions calendar is fully booked and pricing continues to improve across all product service lines,” CEO Jeff Miller said on Halliburton’s most recent earnings call, in late January. We’re also fans of Halliburton’s new plan to return at least half of its annual free cash flow back to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. While that strategy is similar to those deployed by the Club’s three other energy stocks — Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD), Coterra Energy (CTRA) and Devon Energy (DVN) — Halliburton is a different kind of company. This makes its earnings relatively less dependent on the price of oil than those three exploration and production (E & P) firms. We have a 2 rating on HAL shares, meaning we’d wait for additional weakness before considering whether to add to our position. The average price target from analysts who cover Halliburton is roughly 31% above Tuesday’s close of $37.85. 3. Cisco Systems Estimated 2023 EPS growth: 14.88% Dividend yield: 3.2% Forward P/E: 12.38 CSCO 1Y mountain Cisco’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Cisco’s sales and profits have topped Wall Street expectations for three quarters in a row, including its most recent report, in mid-February , which was accompanied by a full-year guidance hike for revenue and earnings. However, questions still persist about whether Cisco is just feasting on the sizable backlog accumulated during the Covid pandemic and could run into challenges once it normalizes. With that skepticism about new order growth present, Cisco shares are up less than 1% since the company’s impressive results Feb. 15. We have a 2 rating on the stock. Meanwhile, the average price target from Cisco analysts on Wall Street is about 16% higher than where the stock closed Tuesday at $48.91 per share. 4. Caterpillar Estimated 2023 EPS growth: 14.71% Dividend yield: 2% Forward P/E: 15.5 CAT 1Y mountain Caterpillar’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Like Halliburton, Caterpillar sells into end markets that are prosperous and well-positioned to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Caterpillar, in particular, benefits from Washington’s infrastructure spending bill, which funds projects that need the company’s construction and mining equipment. This demand for Caterpillar’s products should allow the industrial powerhouse to raise prices when necessary, a dynamic that’s good for earnings and on display in its fourth-quarter results . We have a 1 rating on the stock. The average price target from analysts covering the stock implies a 4% gain from Tuesday’s close of $246.14 per share. 5. Morgan Stanley Estimated 2023 EPS growth: 13.84% Dividend yield: 3.2% Forward P/E: 13.3 MS 1Y mountain Morgan Stanley’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Morgan Stanley’s business transformation — from the boom-and-bust world of investment banking into the more stable realm of asset management — is core to our rationale for being shareholders. And, it’s continuing to play out according to plan. We see the bank as a stock to hold for the long term. In addition, Morgan Stanley pays a solid dividend, yielding over 3% annually at current levels, and buys back healthy amounts of stock. That rewards us for our patience. We have a 2 rating on Morgan Stanley shares. The average price target from analysts who cover Morgan Stanley is about 6% above the stock’s closing price of $96.06 on Tuesday. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long WFC, HAL, CSCO, CAT and MS . See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Workers walk towards Halliburton Co. “sand castles” at an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. hydraulic fracturing (fracking) site north of Dacono, Colorado, U.S., on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014.
Jamie Schwaberow | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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.
