Looking for a Growth Stock? 3 Reasons Why Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) is a Solid Choice

However, the Zacks Growth Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which looks beyond the traditional growth attributes to analyze a company's real growth prospects, makes it pretty easy to find cutting-edge growth stocks.

Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) is one such stock that our proprietary system currently recommends. The company not only has a favorable Growth Score, but also carries a top Zacks Rank.

Research shows that stocks carrying the best growth features consistently beat the market. And for stocks that have a combination of a Growth Score of A or B and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy), returns are even better.

While there are numerous reasons why the stock of this financial and professional services company is a great growth pick right now, we have highlighted three of the most important factors below:

Earnings Growth

Arguably nothing is more important than earnings growth, as surging profit levels is what most investors are after. And for growth investors, double-digit earnings growth is definitely preferable, and often an indication of strong prospects (and stock price gains) for the company under consideration.

While the historical EPS growth rate for Jones Lang LaSalle is 0.2%, investors should actually focus on the projected growth. The company's EPS is expected to grow 28.6% this year, crushing the industry average, which calls for EPS growth of 7.2%.

Impressive Asset Utilization Ratio

Growth investors often overlook asset utilization ratio, also known as sales-to-total-assets (S/TA) ratio, but it is an important feature of a real growth stock. This metric exhibits how efficiently a firm is utilizing its assets to generate sales.

Right now, Jones Lang LaSalle has an S/TA ratio of 1.56, which means that the company gets $1.56 in sales for each dollar in assets. Comparing this to the industry average of 0.2, it can be said that the company is more efficient.

In addition to efficiency in generating sales, sales growth plays an important role. And Jones Lang LaSalle is well positioned from a sales growth perspective too. The company's sales are expected to grow 9.4% this year versus the industry average of 0%.

Promising Earnings Estimate Revisions

Superiority of a stock in terms of the metrics outlined above can be further validated by looking at the trend in earnings estimate revisions. A positive trend is of course favorable here. Empirical research shows that there is a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.

The current-year earnings estimates for Jones Lang LaSalle have been revising upward. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has surged 5.9% over the past month.

Bottom Line

Jones Lang LaSalle has not only earned a Growth Score of A based on a number of factors, including the ones discussed above, but it also carries a Zacks Rank #2 because of the positive earnings estimate revisions.

You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

This combination indicates that Jones Lang LaSalle is a potential outperformer and a solid choice for growth investors.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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