UEIC Or CTRL: Which Is The Better Value Stock Right Now?

Investors looking for stocks in the Electronics - Miscellaneous Products sector might want to consider either Universal Electronics (UEIC) or Control4 (CTRL). But which of these two stocks presents investors with the better value opportunity right now? Let's take a closer look.

There are plenty of strategies for discovering value stocks, but we have found that pairing a strong Zacks Rank with an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system produces the best returns. The Zacks Rank favors stocks with strong earnings estimate revision trends, and our Style Scores highlight companies with specific traits.

Universal Electronics has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), while Control4 has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now. This means that UEIC's earnings estimate revision activity has been more impressive, so investors should feel comfortable with its improving analyst outlook. However, value investors will care about much more than just this.

Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.

Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.

UEIC currently has a forward P/E ratio of 11.12, while CTRL has a forward P/E of 14.89. We also note that UEIC has a PEG ratio of 0.74. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. CTRL currently has a PEG ratio of 1.35.

Another notable valuation metric for UEIC is its P/B ratio of 1.58. The P/B is a method of comparing a stock's market value to its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. By comparison, CTRL has a P/B of 2.35.

These are just a few of the metrics contributing to UEIC's Value grade of A and CTRL's Value grade of C.

UEIC sticks out from CTRL in both our Zacks Rank and Style Scores models, so value investors will likely feel that UEIC is the better option right now.