on to 2025 we go coming off another solid year in the S&P 500 but a new year brings new challenges and traditionally January is a decent month for the S&P 500 before we technically run into a bit of turbulence from a seasonality perspective during the month of February as such in today's video we're going to be covering five of the best stocks to consider buying in the month of January this list is going to include both growth stocks and and dividend paying stocks so before we unveil this list do me a huge favor show your appreciation by simply clicking that like button down below subscribe to the channel and let's jump into [Music] it hey everyone Mark rusen here back for another video as always I'm a CPA and not a financial adviser so please do not take this as Financial advice and let me thank y sheets for sponsoring today's video when it comes to investing in stocks research is key but the problem comes with the fact that research can take so much time to copy and paste the data like you see in this video here and to Compound on that investors are usually looking at hundreds of stocks just to find the perfect investment for their portfolio and to eliminate all that that's where wi sheets comes in as it's a simple add-on to both Google Sheets as well as Microsoft Excel and it's going to gather that data automatically for you whether it is getting all the data you want for a list of stocks like this or whether it's building custom models like this where you can change the ticker and all the data will be downloaded for you and everything updates automatically or if you want to Deep dive into financials of a company y sheets can do all that for you right now for viewers of this channel y sheets is giving $15 off any of their subscriptions by using Code Mark you can check out the link down in the description below all right let's jump back into our video taking a look at five of the top stocks to buy during the month of January beginning with stock number one which is going to be Salesforce stock ticker CRM Salesforce is another AI play it's a software company and AI is going to continue to be a theme entering 2025 where Salesforce is going to be able to not only push further growth but also push further margin expansion that's a combination I love to see as you can see here the company currently has a market cap of $327 billion and over the past 12 months Shares are up nearly 30% analysts are also bullish on the stock in 2025 as they have a 12-month price target of $400 implying nearly 20% upside from current levels in fact highly touted technology analyst Dan IES of web Bush give shares of Salesforce a price target of 425 I spoke earlier about the continued growth but more importantly the thing I'm keying in for this company is that margin expansion this this is a company that has seen operating margins expand from mid single digits just a few years ago to 177% over the trailing 12 months eida margins the past 2 years were 15 and 19% respectively but over the trailing 12 months they generated eida margins north of 25% in terms of valuation analysts are looking for the company to generate 2025 EPS of 1122 which gives the company a forward PE multiple of 30. 5 times well below their 5year average of 37. 4 times looking from another angle EV to iida currently trades at 30.
5 the lowest in the past decade Plus for the company and well below their 5-year average of 36. 9 there's a lot to like when it comes to sales force in 2025 they continue to find unique Partnerships to push that further growth moving forward and that brings us to stock number two which is going to be gener Holdings stock ticker jnrc for those of you unaware gener is one of the largest manufacturers across the globe when it comes to generators and with energy needs changing and larger and bigger weather events happening there's a big demand out there for power backups and generators gener share prices reached a high of near $200 per share back in November but have since retreated back down to the 150s falling 20% in a short period of time the market cap currently sits at $9 billion and over the past 12 months Shares are up 20% and although Shares are up 20% over the past 12 months that includes a 20% decline we have seen just in the past month on really no major news no earnings events no corporate news that's coming out from generra as a whole it's just been selling pressures and as a long-term investor these are opportunities that we love to take analysts have a 12-month price target of nearly $180 per share implying roughly 15% upside from current levels during the pandemic gener saw record sales as more and more folks were forced to their homes and they were fleeing looking for backup power supplies which included generators now with the pandemic behind us we are back to normal operations for gener normal growth Trends and for that you might think well financials are probably down from those record levels we saw just a few years ago but when you look at free cash flow bottom right of this chart we are sitting at record levels with near record grow gross margin percentages as well in terms of valuation analysts are looking for the company to generate 2025 EPS of $ 829 next year giving the company a forward PE multiple of 18. 8 times well below their 5year average of 26.
3 times and their EV to eida currently sits at 16. 4 also showing that the stock is very undervalued as their 5year average is at 19. 3 times gener is a stock that's been on my watch list for some time and now might be the perfect time heading into winter and that leads us to stock number three which is going to be vichi property stock tier VI CI vichi is going to be the loan Reit on our list of five stocks looking here today and for those of you unaware vichi is the largest landlord on the Las Vegas Strip owning properties such as the Caesar's Palace MGM Grand Park MGM The Mandalay Bay and the list goes on REITs in general have seen some selling pressure as rates are not intended to fall as fast as many of us originally intended but from a Long Point of View rates are still going to be coming down and that's going to benefit this sector as a whole so I'm looking for high quality reats to add slowly to this is exactly the position we were in in late August before we saw our big runup so now with a big sell-off in the likes of vichi which is one of my favorite reats and the largest re holding within my portfolio I'm taking advantage of this drop back shares of vichi currently trade with a market cap of $31 billion and over the past 12 months Shares are down nearly 10% this is a fantastic re with a great management team and a portfolio of properties that can perform well really in any environment because you have to remember vichi isn't the operator of these casinos they have some of the best operators around and vichi is one of the only REITs on the market today in the public markets that has continued to gain 100% rent rental payment even during the pandemic the likes of realy income saw their payments drop down to 50% that means if they were do a hundred bucks from all of their portfolio they were only receiving 50% of that vichi was receiving 100% that speaks to the quality of the operators when it comes to vichi and again they're not looking for The Operators to perform necessarily record levels they just need them to perform well enough to be able to pay the rent analysts are on the re rating it a strong buy with a 12-month price target of nearly $35 implying more than 20% upside from current levels in addition to that potential upside in the stock as an investor you're also claiming nearly a 6% annual dividend yield getting The Best of Both Worlds and management has increased the dividend every year that they've been a public company in terms of valuation again we're not going to be looking at price to earnings instead we'll be looking at afo where analysts are looking for the company to generate 2025 afo of $232 per share which equates to a forward price to afo of 12.
5 times criminally cheap this is well below their 5year average of 16. 3 and that leads us to stock number four which is going to be Qualcomm stock ticker qcom when it comes to Qualcomm being a semiconductor company they haven't really seen the upswing that many other semiconductor companies have seen they've been kind of thrown out of the bathtub if you will and I think that's been a major mistake long term and this is going to be an opportunity especially for those of you that are value hunting this is a company with a strong chip presence in handsets which I believe could Rebound in 2025 and into 2026 but this company is much more than handsets they've continued to diversify into Automotive AI internet of things and so much more the company currently has a market cap of7 $6 billion and over the past 12 months up nearly 9% when looking at Qualcomm a lot of the trouble has ensued when they acquired nuvia a deal that resulted in arm bringing about a lawsuit that is held over the heads of both companies of late if you've been following the case it seems like Qualcomm has the upper hand and this will release the buyers back into the stock when it's all settled as a long-term investor we want to be in the stock before this happens analysts are high in the stock grading at a moderate buy with a 12-month price target of nearly $200 per share implying more than 25% upside from current levels in addition Qualcomm has a long history of not only paying a dividend but growing their dividend as they are nearly a dividend Aristocrat increasing their dividend for more than 20 consecutive years the company currently yields a dividend of more than 2% in terms of valuation analysts are looking for the company to generate 2025 EPS of 1119 next year which equates to a for PE multiple of 14. 1 times this well below their 5-year average of 16.
6 times the stock has been consolidating now for some time looking poised for a breakout higher and that leads us to stock number five which is Advanced Micro Devices stock ticker AMD AMD is a company that I listed in my top grow stocks for 2025 which you can check out in the link down in the description below this is the year for AMD at least we hope we're not looking for them to surpass Nvidia but they are a clear second place winner and the share price hasn't really shown that this is the time where they need to close that gap which will pay off huge for the share price and for investors it's time for those Acquisitions that they've been making to start paying off the company currently has a market cap of roughly $200 billion and over the past 12 months Shares are down roughly 15% it's hard to think about a semiconductor company being negative over the past 12 months but both Qualcomm and AMD have figured out a way to do that however with AMD launching a brand new chip and PCs looking to Rebound in 2025 more of those AI compatible PCS and laptops this could be a great growth driver for AMD analysts are extremely high on the stock rating it a buy with an average 12-month price target of nearly $185 implying nearly 50% upside from current level lels in terms of valuation this is where things get wild analysts are looking for 2025 EPS of roughly $5 flat which equates to a Ford earnings multiple of 24. 9 times this is well below their 5year average of 59. 4 but for many of these high growth stocks we don't want to focus as much on PE multiples instead I like to look at Peg ratios Peg ratios less than one showing that the PE that you're paying for and the growth that this company's expected to get you're getting a great deal which is the case with AMD looking from another angle EV to EA is currently at 43.
