Investors following the growth or value strategy are always on the lookout for stocks that are poised to see strong growth and are available at a discount. Growth at a reasonable price or GARP investing is a strategy that takes care of these criteria.

The GARP approach prefers stocks that are priced below the market or any reasonable target determined by fundamental analysis. These stocks also have solid prospects in terms of cash flow, revenues, earnings per share (EPS) and so on.

However, one should not confuse GARP investing with the blend strategy. While the blend strategy promotes investment in both value and growth stocks, GARP investing requires both value and growth features in a single stock.

Growth Metrics

Strong earnings growth and solid prospects are the main concepts that GARP investors borrow from the growth investing strategy. However, instead of super-normal growth rates, picking stocks with a more stable and reasonable growth rate is a preferred tactic of GARP investors. Hence, growth rates between 10% and 20% are considered ideal under the strategy.

Another growth metric that is considered by both growth and GARP investors is return on equity (ROE). GARP investors look for strong and higher ROE compared to the industry average to identify superior stocks. Moreover, stocks with positive cash flow find precedence under the GARP plan.

Value Metrics

GARP investing gives priority to one of the popular value metrics – price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Though this investing style picks stocks with higher P/E ratios compared to value investors, it avoids companies with extremely high P/E ratios. Moreover, the price-to-book value (P/B) ratio is another value metric that is considered.

Using the GARP principle, we have run a screen to identify stocks that should offer solid returns in the near term.

Screening Parameters

Along with the criteria discussed in the above section, we have considered a favorable Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy).