Cincinnati Financial Corporation Stock Upgraded (CINF)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Cincinnati Financial Corporation (Nasdaq:CINF) has been upgraded by TheStreet Ratings from hold to buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and reasonable valuation levels. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat weak growth in earnings per share.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

• CINF's debt-to-equity ratio is very low at 0.19 and is currently below that of the industry average, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels.
• CINF, with its decline in revenue, slightly underperformed the industry average of 7.0%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues fell by 11.9%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.
• Net operating cash flow has decreased to $144.00 million or 12.19% when compared to the same quarter last year. Despite a decrease in cash flow of 12.19%, CINCINNATI FINANCIAL CORP is in line with the industry average cash flow growth rate of -13.96%.
• The share price of CINCINNATI FINANCIAL CORP has not done very well: it is down 5.47% and has underperformed the S&P 500, in part reflecting the company's sharply declining earnings per share when compared to the year-earlier quarter. Looking ahead, although the push and pull of the overall market trend could certainly make a critical difference, we do not see any strong reason stemming from the company's fundamentals that would cause a continuation of last year's decline. In fact, the stock is now selling for less than others in its industry in relation to its current earnings.

Cincinnati Financial Corporation engages in the property casualty insurance business in the United States. Its Commercial Lines Property Casualty Insurance segment provides coverage for commercial casualty, commercial property, commercial auto, and workers' compensation. The company has a P/E ratio of 29.9, equal to the average insurance industry P/E ratio and above the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7. Cincinnati Financial has a market cap of $4.7 billion and is part of the financial sector and insurance industry. Shares are down 7.6% year to date as of the close of trading on Monday.

You can view the full Cincinnati Financial Ratings Report or get investment ideas from our investment research center.

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