Five 'Buy'-Rated Gold Stocks to Mine

As the economy tanks and the Treasury's printing presses work overtime, investors are paying more attention to gold, which has been trading just below $1,000 an ounce all month.

Investors could buy gold coins to take advantage of the precious metal's rising value, but they would have to deal with storage and insurance costs. That's why many investors turn to gold-mining stocks. TheStreet.com Ratings' quantitative model give these five gold-mining stocks grades that put them in "buy" territory.

These companies range in size, based on annual revenue, from $66 million for Royal Gold(RGLD Quote) to $2.21 billion for Goldcorp(GG Quote).

We gave four of the stocks "reward grades" in the "A" range. However, the volatility of the yellow metal resulted in "risk grades" in the "D" range for four of them. Four of the stocks pay modest dividend yields, though the rates are under 1%.

While most of Royal Gold's revenue comes from royalties instead of mining, we gave the firm our highest reward grade, "A-plus." It also had the lowest risk mark, "C," of the group.

RealMoney contributor Dan Fitzpatrick discusses gold prices in this video. Fitzpatrick publishes The Stock Market Mentor newsletter.

Five Buy-Rated 'Good as Gold' Stocks Company Royal Gold INC Eldorado Gold Kinross Gold CORP Goldcorp Randgold Resources Ticker RGLD EGO KGC GG GOLD Industry Metals & Mining Metals & Mining Metals & Mining Metals & Mining Metals & Mining TheStreet.com Ratings Reward Grade A+ A A- A- B+ TheStreet.com Ratings Risk Grade C D+ D+ D D TheStreet.com Ratings Overall Grade B B B- B- B- TheStreet.com Ratings Recommendation Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Recent price 42.50 8.46 18.91 31.75 47.78 Latest Fisc. Yr. Revenue ($Mil.) 66.3 179.3 1,093.0 2,206.8 282.8 Market Cap ($Mil.) 1,445.4 3,115.6 13,030.5 23,239.1 3,655.2 Total Assets ($Mil.) 545.8 591.7 6,729.3 18,952.2 780.7 Total Debt ($Mil.) 15.8 65.6 564.1 1064.9 9.5 Earnings Before Interest & Taxes ($Mil.) 33.0 47.5 223.0 612.3 62.0 Cash Flow from Operations ($Mil.) 39.1 69.8 341.2 723.9 62.2 EPS - Latest Avail. 12 Mos. 1.10 0.14 0.54 1.00 0.61 EPS - Curr. Year Consensus 0.72 N/A N/A N/A 1.09 EPS - Next Yr. Consensus 1.02 N/A N/A N/A 1.81 Price/Book Ratio 2.9x 4.6x 2.2x 1.7x 5.5x Ret'n on Equity (%) 3.8 8.0 5.9 5.1 6.9 P/E - Current Year 59.4x N/A N/A N/A 43.7x P/E - Next Year 41.7x N/A N/A N/A 26.4x Dividend Yield (%) 0.75 0.00 0.40 0.57 0.25 Source: TheStreet.com Ratings (Data as of 2/13/2009). For an explanation of our ratings, click here.