Kimberly Clark Corp (KMB), And Three Reasons to Pick This Personal Care Stock

Fundamentally stronger over its competitors

Kimberly Clark Corp (NYSE:KMB) announced its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, performing ahead of expectations. Q1 EPS of $1.48 is $0.15 above the expectation and revenue of $5.32 billion is $0.04 billion ahead of it. Market responded well to the news and the stock jumped about 5% on the announcement day.

Kimberly-Clark has an edge over its competitors like P&G and Johnson & Johnson, fundamentally. Let’s look into the fundamental-details of each one of them to compare.

Procter & Gamble – like Kimberly Clark Corp (NYSE:KMB) is also on bullish trend in the last one year and gained about 30%. Its EPS stands at 4.41, one of the highest in the industry, just next to Kimberly-Clark’s EPS of 4.42. In terms of fundamentals, The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) has a P/E ratio of 18.18 while Kimberly-Clark has it at around 22. Price to Book value stands around 3.3 and price to sales at 2.6 for The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG). Though these figures are impressive but with the net earnings showing a growth of -8.82%, in the previous year consolidated results, the fundamentals don’t augur well for P&G stock.

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) – price to earnings ratio is around 16, price to book value stands around 3.5 and price to sales at 3.4. Here also, with the net earnings decreasing in the previous quarter and having high P/E value, the stock is not expected to show a bullish trend.

For Kimberly-Clark, EPS increased by 12 percent in the previous year and sales increased by three percent. With these growth and healthy fundamental figures, investors can expect the stock’s price to appreciate further.

Conclusion

Kimberly-Clark is one of the few stocks that are able to maintain their price level for more than a year. This stock is still showing an upward trend and there are reasons to believe that the trend is justified. Since the company modified its strategies in the overseas markets and has strong fundamentals, I feel confidently bullish on this stock for the long run.

The article 3 Reasons to Pick This Personal Care Stock originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Shas Dey.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.