www

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) has been growing very nicely the past three years. It has overtaken Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) in the personal computer business, continued to do well in the color printer business and it has been profitable. From an investment perspective I see a mixed bag. On the positive side the P/S is a low 1.39 and the P/B is a fair 3.06. It has almost no debt and decent ROE, ROA and ROIC. On the mediocre side the dividend at 0.70% only offers a third of the return of the other DJIA stocks and the P/E at 19.55 is nothing to get excited about. I am not enamored of the highly competitive, R&D intensive PC or printer business and there is nothing in the data to persuade me otherwise. I think the stock is fairly valued.

Home Depot (NYSE: HD) has been trading in a very tight range for the last six months. I am already on the record as pegging HD as a value and including it my seven picks for the year from last December. The metrics speak for themselves and they speak loud and clear. The yield on HD is the mean score for the Dow, 2.3%. It has a super low P/S of .88 and a deceiving P/B of 3.0 which I am confident is actually lower. As a real estate investor I can assure all that there is no way that HD's vast holdings are on the books anywhere near current value. It is one of the factors, along with it's huge cash-flow that continues to fuel speculation that Home Depot might be a takeover target. HD has a solid ROE, ROA and ROIC and barely any debt. While the share price has not made any great strides in the first half of the year I still view this stock as one to watch.

Honeywell International (NYSE: HON) is one of the more unusual stocks in the Dow. On most levels it is a tech stock, but the tech it represents is in strong markets and leans toward the industrial side like aircraft engines and energy management. Both areas have good demand and are relevant in the expanding global economy. On a price-to-sales basis it is a value. On every other basis there is nothing to discuss. It is fairly valued, might have some upside, but not any more than the Dow as a whole.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is another stock near it's 52-week high and much of what I said about Honeywell could be said about Intel. It is indisputably one of the best-managed companies over the last three decades and has had some of the most brilliant thinkers in the world permeating the entire company, but it's products tend more toward commoditization these days and it's having to spend vast sums on R&D just to stay in the same place. It has higher than average profit margins at almost 15% and no debt worth mentioning. To me it is fairly valued and I would bet on the index over the stock here, too.

Conclusion: Only Home Depot provides some opportunity from a value perspective. The fact that it has held it's own on the downside despite poor news about housing starts and permits with no end in site; has suffered the indignities of a me-first CEO, now departed on a bed of money; and it is yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel in it's head-on competition with Lowe's Cos (NYSE: LOW) are all signs to me that there is significant upside. The data I used was from the close on May 29, 2007

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.