12 Chemical Stocks Near 52-Week Lows
If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.
In this series, I do the initial legwork for you. To prevent us from being inundated with scores of disparate companies, I conduct my search by industry. This allows us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.
Today, let's look at the chemicals space. Below are the dozen stocks that are within 25% of their 52-week lows and have market caps above $200 million.
Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical (NYS: SHI) | $37.87 | $32.24 | $63.05 | 6.5 |
PolyOne (NYS: POL) | $11.61 | $9.80 | $16.61 | 4.4 |
Praxair (NYS: PX) | $105.27 | $88.64 | $111.74 | 23.4 |
Sigma-Aldrich (NAS: SIAL) | $67.78 | $56.18 | $76.16 | 18.8 |
Zep | $16.13 | $13.33 | $20.95 | 20.7 |
Sherwin-Williams (NYS: SHW) | $84.24 | $69.47 | $87.87 | 18.1 |
Olin (NYS: OLN) | $19.60 | $16.11 | $27.16 | 7.0 |
Airgas | $71.43 | $58.00 | $72.39 | 23.1 |
Minerals Technologies | $56.99 | $46.17 | $70.68 | 16.4 |
Air Products & Chemicals | $89.41 | $72.26 | $98.01 | 16.0 |
Calgon Carbon | $16.46 | $13.28 | $18.20 | 22.2 |
Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYS: SMG) | $49.96 | $39.99 | $60.62 | 19.5 |
Source: S&P Capital IQ and Yahoo! Finance.
Over just the past 10 days, Sinopec shares have gone as low as $33.18 and as high as $43.00. It announced earnings late last week that were roughly flat with the previous year's quarter. As management explained it:
"The Group proceeded actively with various tasks, leading to increases in sales volumes and unit prices of products of the Company. As a result, operating income of the Company increased. However, international crude oil prices fluctuated at high levels, resulting in an increase in operating costs; the prices of domestic refined oil products were not adjusted adequately and timely enough; and the competition was further intensified for petrochemicals."
Looking through the list, two other names pop out: PolyOne and Olin, which have P/E ratios well under 10. Note that their forward P/E ratios are also under 10, PolyOne just barely. You can check out PolyOne's latest earnings news here. And I recently took a look at Olin's initial numbers here.
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At the time thisarticle was published Anand Chokkavelu doesn't own shares of any company mentioned. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro and Sherwin-Williams. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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