Top 5 All-Around-Value Stocks for March 3

Each business day, TheStreet.com Ratings TheStreet.com Ratings compiles a list of the top five stocks in five categories -- fast-growth, all-around value, large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap -- based on data from the close of the previous trading session. Today, all-around-value stocks are in the spotlight.

These are stocks of companies that meet a number of criteria, including annual revenue of more than $500 million, lower-than-average valuations such as a price-to-sales ratio of less than 2, and leverage that is less than 49% of total capital.

In addition, they must rank near the top of all stocks rated by our proprietary quantitative model, which looks at more than 60 factors. The stocks must also be followed by at least one financial analyst who posts estimates on the Institutional Brokers' Estimate System. They are ordered by their potential to appreciate.

Note that no provision is made for off-balance-sheet assets such as unrealized appreciation/depreciation of investments, market value of real estate or contingent liabilities that might affect book value. This could be material for some companies with large, underfunded pension plans.

Medco Health Solutions(MHS Quote) is one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers, providing sophisticated traditional and specialty pharmacy benefit programs and services for clients, members of client-funded benefit plans, and individual patients. We upgraded Medco to a buy rating in December 2008, based on such strengths as its growth, efficiency, and solvency.

The company reported its results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 on Feb. 24. The company reported revenue growth of 15% year over year in the third quarter, boosted in part by record specialty pharmacy revenues of over $2 billion. This growth appears to have helped boost earnings per share, which improved 48.7% when compared to the same quarter a year ago. Net income also increased, rising 37.7% from $214.9 million to $295.7 million over the past year. We are encouraged by a trend of positive EPS over the past two years. Net operating cash flow surged 327.3% in the third quarter. In addition, a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.8 implies that Medco has been somewhat successful at managing its debt levels, although a relatively weak quick ratio of 0.8 shows the potential for future problems in this area.