Stocks: Searching for Accelerating Profits
This week's BusinessWeek S&P screen uncovers six top-ranked names expected to post rising earnings in 2008, and even higher growth in 2009.

They looked for stocks that were forecast to have positive earnings growth in 2008 and an even greater rate of profit increase in 2009.

Then they wanted to make sure that the stocks were attractive based on fundamentals. So they scanned that list for those issues ranked 4 STARS (buy) or 5 STARS (hold) by S&P equity analysts. Stocks with those rankings are expected to outperform the broader market over the next 12 months and rise in price on an absolute basis.

Six stocks made the cut, four of which pay dividends. Interestingly, most of them were non-U.S. companies with listed American Depositary Shares:

Company Ticker S&P STARS Rank Dividend Yield
Aon Corp. AOC 4 1.2%
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya BBV 4 4.8%
Banco Santander STD 5 4.6%
Desarrolladora Homex HXM 5 No Dividend
Huaneng Power International HNP 5 5.1%
Shanda Interactive Entertainment SNDA 5 No Dividend

The Div Guy owns shares of STD at the time of this post.