Italy PM Visited Tech Execs: Should We Be Looking at Italian Stocks?

Last week, the Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, visited the top executives at Google (GOOGL), Yahoo (YHOO), and Twitter (TWTR), including Dick Costolo, Marissa Mayer and Larry Page. He also met with the Italian heads of startups.

Comparing the iShares MSCI Italy ETF (EWI) to the S&P 500, you would find that the Italy stocks have underperformed the S&P by over five percentage points. Do you think it is time for Italy to catch up?

Eyeglasses

One of the most famous Italian companies is Luxottica  (LUX), the largest eyeglass manufacturer in the world with more than 80% of the market. The company has even been featured on 60 Minutes a couple times. The stock trades at  33.6 times trailing earnings and 23.8 times forward earnings. Quarterly earnings went up by 11.0% on a 2.1% rise in revenues. The stock pays a yield of  1.3%.

Power

ENI (E), which was lucky enough to get one of the one-letter stock symbols, is in the energy, gas and power, and chemicals industries. The stock has a 12.7 price to earnings ratio and a forward PE of 13.9. Earnings for the latest quarter spiked by 139% on a slight drop in sales. The company pays a fat dividend of 4.7%.

Furniture

A more speculative stock is Natuzzi (NTZ) which make upholstered furniture, both leather and fabric. The stock trades for slightly above two dollars a share. Revenues were down slightly and earnings were negative for the latest quarter.

 For a free list of Italian stocks, which includes the price to earnings ratio and yield, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. Ciao!

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written and has no plans to do so in the next 72 hours.

By Stockerblog.com