4 Value Stocks for the Contrarian Investor

Editor's note: As part of our partnership with Nightly Business Report, TheStreet's Gregg Greenberg will appear on NBR Monday (watch video and read transcript here) to highlight contrarian stock plays that asset managers are making now.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Aflac (AFL) shareholders haven't had much to quack about the past year with the stock severely underperforming the S&P 500, but Bill Smead, portfolio manager for the Smead Value Investor Fund (SMVLX), expects that to change.

"They cleaned up their trouble with their European bond ownership and now they've got $100 billion dollars to invest, and furthermore the stock trades cheaply at just over 6 times next year's earnings," says Smead, who also won't rule out the possibility of Aflac being acquired at some point in the near future.

The $55.8 million fund, which garners 4 stars from Morningstar, is up 15% over the past 12 months putting it in the top 3% of large blend funds tracked by Morningstar. Over the past three years, the fund has returned an average of 26% annually, outpacing 88% of its Morningstar rivals.

Smead is also bullish on another unloved equity in H&R Block (HRB), which also trades at a low P/E ratio of 10 times forward earnings. It also provides a 4.7% dividend. The company had trouble with their subprime lending business, which they eventually sold, but Snead says the company has moved on.

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"It has a great balance sheet with a reserve for the subprime lending business it no longer owns. People have been on edge wondering how that's ever going to play out and the answer is that it's not going to be any kind of big problem," says Snead, who adds that the tax accounting company will also benefit from steadily decreasing unemployment.

"When unemployment drops from 10% to 8%, they pick up a lot of tax customers. People that have been unemployed due to the housing bust are coming back into the workforce and they need their taxes prepared."

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Media giant Gannett (GCI) is another one of Snead's contrarian plays. While the newspaper business has not done well in the past few years, Snead says the company is learning how to make it profitable again.

"The newspapers are beginning to figure out that they don't give their stuff away. For example, I stayed here at the Waldorf and they are offering USA Today for their guests. I thought that that's a pretty good compliment for a major hotel to still be using USA today," says Snead who also likes the fact that Gannett owns TV stations in an ad-crazy election year.

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