Investors See Value In Data Providers

Article Excerpt

Demand for financial and business information is ballooning. A great deal of this information is available for free on the Internet, but users have doubts about its accuracy. So they are willing to pay for data they can trust from reputable sources, such as these four top providers of specialized business information. Investors see a lot of value and long-term growth potential in these companies. That helps explain why they often trade at above-average p/e ratios (the S&P 500’s p/e is currently 17.4).We see only two of these stocks as buys right now. DOW JONES & CO. $34 (New York symbol DJ; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; WSSF Rating: Above average) publishes The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s magazine. It also owns several smaller publications, and provides newswire and specialized information services. The company has suffered in this decade, like all publishers, from fiercer competition for ads. Its profits have stagnated in the past five years, although sales have risen from $1.56 billion…