Obama Pick: Buy Jacobs Engineering (JEC)

Now that Senator Obama is President-elect Obama, what will he do with the economy and how can you profit from it? One way is to look for stocks that will benefit from a part of his proposed economic stimulus plan -- the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that would spend $60 billion over 10 years on roads, bridges, ports, airports and rail lines.

One company that could benefit from this investment would be Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC), which engineers municipal infrastructure. The stock is down 57% in the last year due to concerns about whether states and cities will build new infrastructure in the face of a crumbling economy. But does the Jacobs' stock drop mean it will go up now that Obama is President?

If its earnings estimates are credible, I would say Jacobs could be a good investment. That's because the stock trades at a Price/Earnings to Growth Ratio (PEG) of 0.55 and a stock whose PEG is below 1.0 looks undervalued to me. Jacobs' 0.5 PEG is based on a P/E ratio of 11.4 on earnings growth of 20.8% to EPS of $4.05 in the fiscal year ending September 2009.

And if Obama enacts his infrastructure plan in 2009, Jacobs' earnings prospects could brighten even more.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Jacobs Engineering securities.