Companies with large amounts of cash have a greater ability to withstand the pressures of a recession and are well positioned to expand their businesses through takeovers if such opportunities present themselves. However, we believe that an analysis of a firm’s cash position would be incomplete without also considering their debt burden. As a result, we have conducted a study of firms with large cash on hand and subtracted total liabilities to determine their net cash position.

The list below shows 20 of the largest firms with high net cash.

20 Stocks With High Net Cash*

*Cash & Equivalents + Short-Term Investments - Total Liabilities
**Our Proprietary Recommendations

These stocks should not be blindly purchased. Rather, investors can use this list as a starting point. Ideally, investors should try to determine what growth opportunities are available to these firms if that is possible. If growth opportunities exist (i.e. there are potential takeover targets) within their respective industries, then the excess cash (possibly combined with additional debt) can be put to good use. In addition, investors should consider valuations, qualitative factors along with industry competition.

The fourth column in the table above shows our Ranking System’s buy/sell recommendations (for more information about our Ranking System please visit our website). According to our Ranking System AAPL, CSCO, QCOM, FRX, ADBE should outperform the broad market over the next 3-12 months.

Happy Trading

Disclosure: No positions at the time of writing.

Tags: AAPL, ADBE, ADI, BEN, BRCM, buy, CELG, CSCO, FORM, FRX, GOOG, GPRO, hold/sell, HTH, IACI, JNPR, MXIM, net cash, NVR, QCOM, SCMR, sell, strong buy, strong sell, TLAB, YHOO

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 PM and is filed under Investment Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.