Stock picking can be a daunting task – experts make it look easy, but they’ve built their careers on making sense of the market’s accumulated data. For many, there’s a wall of raw information, an intimidating barrier to understanding what’s going on with any given stock.
Those reams of data are generated by day after day of routine trading activity in the stock markets. Thousands of professional stock traders are dealing in thousands of public shares, resulting in millions of transactions every day. Fortunately, the TipRanks Smart Score can help you make sense of that flood of information. This data sorting and collating tool, based on an AI-powered natural language algorithm, has the ability to analyze the full range of stock information, and then to rate every stock according to a set of factors that have proven to predict future share performance – or outperformance.
That rating is given as a simple score, on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s an intuitive rating, and shows investors at a glance what direction a stock is likely to go in the near term – and the ‘Perfect 10s,’ the stocks that have secured highest possible Smart Score, deserve a closer look.
We’ve gotten started on that, using the Smart Score page to look up two ‘Perfect 10’ stocks that hit all the right marks – and we’ve found that Wall Street is bullish on them. Here are their details, and comments from some of the Street’s top analysts.
ICF International (ICFI)
When it comes to work, to getting the job done, companies and organizations face a paradox. They all have one or more core competencies, the fields that they focus on, but they also have ancillary needs, jobs and services that are necessary to carry out their primary functions. This holds true for everything from commercial companies to government agencies, and many times they arrive at the same solution: contracting out those services, to consulting and tech firms like ICF.
This Virginia-based services company, the first stock on our list of Perfect 10s, has developed an expertise in cutting-edge tech, and applies that to the needs of its enterprise and agency clients. ICF’s services allow its clients to solve a range of issues and problems, ranging from technological modernization and digitization to improving energy efficiency to strategic planning and marketing analytics to utility consulting. The company serves clients in a wide range of fields, including federally managed health care; education; social service agencies; aviation; disaster management; energy; climate and resilience – it’s quite a list, and the eclectic mix shows the deep need for quality consulting services in a wide range of endeavors.
In recent months, ICF has announced several new contract awards from US government agencies. These include a $32 million digital modernization task order from the US Department of Homeland Security, for upgrades and modernizations to the agency’s investigation systems; several new multi-million-dollar cooperative agreements with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development; and a $78 million digital modernization order from the US Forest Service. The agreements include multi-year terms, from 3 to 7 years.
These new agreements, made during 4Q23, followed up a third quarter which the company described as a record for contract awards. ICF had, as of the end of 3Q23, $9.8 billion in the new business pipeline. The company’s third quarter revenue was listed as $502 million, up 7% year-over-year, although it just missed the forecast by $850,000. At the bottom line, the company saw a 12% y/y increase in the non-GAAP EPS, to $1.81 per share; this was 19 cents per share better than had been expected.
Covering this stock for Canaccord Genuity, 5-star analyst Joseph Vafi sees ICF as a solidly positioned player – in a niche that it has built up itself, with strong prospects for the future. He writes, “ICF is a unique equity play that really doesn’t have a true comparable. Across government and regulated industry markets, ICF is uniquely positioned to have subject-matter expertise in many of the most pressing and enduring public policy issues that are a function of the human existence: health, disaster mitigation, environment, infrastructure, and energy efficiency. None of these issues is really ever going away, and thus we see the company’s value proposition enduring for the long run. This high-level conviction in ICF’s value proposition continues to be underscored in quarter-after-quarter of steady financial performance, including the company’s latest Q3 report.”
Vafi gives these shares a Buy rating, with a price target of $170 to imply a 28% increase over the next 12 months. (To watch Vafi’s track record, click here)
The Strong Buy consensus rating on ICFI shares is based on 4 recent reviews, including 3 to Buy over 1 to Hold. The stock’s $150.75 average price target suggests a one-year upside potential of 14% from the current share price of $132.55. (See ICFI stock forecast)
Tourmaline Bio (TRML)
Next up is a biopharmaceutical company, Tourmaline Bio. This firm is operating at the late clinical stage, and is working on new medicines targeting life-altering immune and inflammatory diseases. These are serious conditions, that can have life-long effects on patients, and that have, in the jargon, ‘high unmet medical needs.’ That is, these conditions frequently lack effective treatments to mitigate their life-altering symptoms. Tourmaline’s goal is to establish new standards of care in the treatment of this class of disease conditions.
Specifically, the company has a lead drug candidate, TOUR006, which is showing strong potential in the treatment of thyroid eye disease (TED). The drug candidate, an anti-IL-6 antibody, has differentiated properties including high binding affinity to IL-6 and a naturally long half-life, which make it effective against TED. The company currently has the spiriTED Phase 2b study ongoing evaluating TOUR006 on this track with a topline data readout slated for 1H25. The company also intends to kick off a pivotal Phase 3 trial for TOUR006 in TED this year, with topline data from the planned Phase 3 study anticipated in 2026.
TOUR006 is also being tested against atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and a Phase 2 trial is expected to begin in the first half of this year. Topline data from this study is also expected for release during 1H25.
While Tourmaline is an established biotech company, founded in 2021, the TRML stock ticker is a new one. Tourmaline entered the public trading markets in the second half of 2023, through a merger agreement with Talaris Therapeutics. The agreement was announced in June of last year, and was completed, with TRML entering trading on the NASDAQ, on October 20. The merger was an all-stock transaction, and the combined company, under the Tourmaline name, boasted $218 million in cash and liquid assets, a total that included $75 million from a private placement. These funds are expected to fund company operations through 2026.
This stock has caught the attention of Truist analyst Robyn Karnauskas, who is predicting a strong earnings potential for the company’s lead candidate pending successful trials. She says of Tourmaline, “We like the TOUR006 story given 1) IL-6 is a well-established target with 4 FDA-approved IL-6 inhibitors spanning >10 indications, 2) TOUR006 has improved dosing/administration relative to other IL-6 inhibitors, 3) TOUR006 has known safety profile from prior Ph2 studies in other indications, 4) Data from IL-6 off-label use show signs of efficacy in lead indication TED, 5) We see a large unmet need in TED that could be met with TOUR006, and 6) We see potential TOUR006 upside across other indications… We model peak unadjusted/adjusted sales of ~$1.4B/$700M in TED alone.”
Karnauskas has a Buy rating on TRML shares and her $43 price target shows her confidence in a 41% upside for the stock in the next 12 months. (To watch Karnauskas’ track record, click here)
This recently public biotech stock holds a Strong Buy consensus rating from the Street’s analysts – and that rating is unanimous, based on 6 positive reviews. The shares are trading for $30.49 and have an average target price of $49.40, suggesting a bullish 62% gain lying in store for the shares this year. (See TRML stock forecast)
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.
