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Stock Ideas
Updated: 14-Aug-26 15:59 ET
Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) added to YIELD rankings
Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) is a new addition to our YIELD Leaders rankings this week. BAH is an advanced technology company focused primarily on government and national security customers, with expertise spanning AI, cybersecurity, cloud, data and defense technology. While government contractors can face budget uncertainty, we see several reasons to like the story. The company is increasingly positioning itself as an advanced technology provider rather than a traditional consulting firm, with roughly 400 active AI projects and a strong position in federal AI and cybersecurity. Booz Allen also has significant exposure to defense and national security spending, areas that we expect to remain strategic priorities.
Last month, BAH reported Q1 (Jun) results with revenue down 4.2% yr/yr to $2.8 bln. BAH said demand is accelerating across its National Security portfolio. However, Civil remains challenged as BAH is still absorbing the prior-year contract reductions and Treasury impacts. Last year's slower award environment also led to fewer new starts to offset programs that are ramping down in the first half. Also, the new contracts are generally smaller in scope and have shorter periods of performance. Together, this creates tough comps in the first half. Booz Allen said it's on track with FY27 expectations despite challenging market dynamics. In Q1, funding was up a solid 17% yr/yr. However, in a midterm election year, historical precedent suggests this will complicate the budget process and create some funding uncertainty, particularly towards the end of the government fiscal year and into BAH's second half of the fiscal year. In parallel, the government is fast-tracking implementation of procurement reform to make fixed price contracts the default approach. BAH feels this is necessary and positive for the long term, but it could also lead to near-term delays in awards as customers adjust how they buy and structure work.
BAH joins our YIELD rankings thanks to a 3.5% buyback yield plus a 3.0% dividend yield for a 6.5% total shareholder yield. Basically, its market is not great now, but with the stock down and buybacks happening, BAH is worth a look. As always, a stop loss limit in the 15-20% is a good idea.
- Additions: AFL, BAH, CPB, CTSH, CVX, EBC, FANG, GIS, VSNT
- Deletions: BAC, C, CLX, MET, OCFC, PAA, PAGP, RDN, VIPS
To address feedback regarding the YIELD list's rate of turnover: much of the week-to-week turnover in the Yield Leaders list can be attributed to two factors: 1) the earnings season-related refresh of dividend and share repurchase data, and 2) stocks whose RS ranks are oscillating just above or below the "Relative Strength > 50" requirement.
Yield Leaders is designed for investors who are looking for a combination of dividend income and capital appreciation. Published every Friday, our weekly rankings are derived from a proprietary screen that heavily weights a metric called Shareholder Yield. While not very well-known, this metric allows investors to screen for companies that not only offer attractive dividend payments, but also offer the potential for capital appreciation that is inherent in large, active buyback programs.
For those who aren't familiar with it, Shareholder Yield is calculated as the sum of the annualized dividend yield plus the percentage of shares outstanding that the company has bought back over the past 12 months. For example, if Company XYZ has an annual dividend yield of 3%, and bought back 4% of its shares outstanding over the past 12 months, this equates to a Shareholder Yield of 7% (3% + 4% = 7%). Essentially, this ratio allows investors to quantify and screen for something that has always been very subjective: managements that are "shareholder-friendly." As such, screening for Shareholder Yield provides a much more targeted list of companies that are aggressively returning cash to their shareholders than you would get by looking at dividend yield alone.
In addition to the yield aspect, the "leaders" part of the title refers to the second component of the system: we require that stocks on our rankings show above-average 6-month Relative Strength, which ensures that our list is populated with high-yielding stocks that are also undergoing a healthy level of accumulation. There are no growth, profitability, or valuation requirements.
To sum up, the companies on our list will feature management teams that are decidedly shareholder-friendly, as evidenced by attractive dividend payouts and/or active share buyback programs. While the system doesn't have any valuation criteria, readers will find that these companies will often feature reasonable valuations as well.
The following table contains a list of stocks that we believe should be particularly attractive to yield investors who are also looking for capital appreciation. Yield Leader components are derived from a quantitative screen that relies on Shareholder Yield, 6-month Relative Strength, and various other secondary criteria. The rankings are based on Shareholder Yield Rank, in descending order. There are no growth, profitability, or valuation criteria applied to this list.
As with any quantitative screen, we encourage readers to further investigate any metric that appears to be unusually high (for example, a Shareholder Yield of 20+%), since it could be inflated by a large one-time event that can't reasonably be extrapolated into the future. Questions or comments? Please send your thoughts directly to Robert Reid at rreid@briefing.com.
*** If you would like to copy and paste the Yield Leaders components into your chart watchlist or spreadsheet, click here to pull up an unformatted ticker list.
| Yield Leaders: August 14, 2026 | ||||||||||
| Mkt Cap | RS | Sh. Yield | Div | Buyback | Shareholder | |||||
| Rank | Name | Ticker | Price | Sector | (bln) | Rank | Rank | Yield | Yield | Yield |
| 1 | Pitney Bowes | PBI | $16.47 | Packaged Software | $2.3 | 71 | 99 | 2.4% | 22.6% | 25.0% |
| 2 | Omnicom Group | OMC | $87.42 | Advertising Services | $24.2 | 71 | 99 | 3.6% | 17.7% | 21.4% |
| 3 | Corebridge Financial | CRBG | $34.41 | Life/Health Insurance | $15.3 | 86 | 99 | 2.9% | 16.2% | 19.1% |
| 4 | Harley-Davidson | HOG | $27.97 | Motor Vehicles | $2.9 | 84 | 98 | 2.7% | 13.4% | 16.0% |
| 5 | Navient | NAVI | $8.92 | Finance/Rental/Leasing | $0.9 | 55 | 97 | 6.9% | 6.4% | 13.4% |
| 6 | Blue Owl Capital | OBDC | $11.79 | Financial Conglomerates | $5.9 | 55 | 97 | 10.4% | 2.9% | 13.3% |
| 7 | Nomad Foods | NOMD | $11.75 | Food: Specialty/Candy | $1.7 | 67 | 96 | 5.6% | 6.9% | 12.6% |
| 8 | MGIC Investment | MTG | $30.99 | Property/Casualty Insurance | $6.3 | 73 | 95 | 2.2% | 9.0% | 11.2% |
| 9 | First Interstate Banc | FIBK | $39.03 | Regional Banks | $3.7 | 63 | 94 | 4.8% | 5.8% | 10.6% |
| 10 | Kinetik Holdings | KNTK | $53.94 | Oil & Gas Pipelines | $8.5 | 72 | 93 | 6.3% | 3.9% | 10.1% |
| 11 | Hess Midstream | HESM | $40.50 | Integrated Oil | $8.2 | 53 | 93 | 7.9% | 2.1% | 10.0% |
| 12 | Columbia Banking | COLB | $32.60 | Regional Banks | $9.2 | 64 | 93 | 4.6% | 5.1% | 9.7% |
| 13 | H&R Block | HRB | $53.85 | Other Consumer Services | $6.8 | 97 | 92 | 3.4% | 6.1% | 9.5% |
| 14 | OneMain | OMF | $65.50 | Finance/Rental/Leasing | $7.5 | 75 | 92 | 6.4% | 3.1% | 9.5% |
| 15 | Star Bulk Carriers | SBLK | $28.94 | Marine Shipping | $3.3 | 71 | 92 | 6.5% | 2.8% | 9.3% |
| 16 | First Horizon | FHN | $26.14 | Regional Banks | $12.3 | 60 | 92 | 2.6% | 6.6% | 9.3% |
| 17 | General Mills | GIS | $39.11 | Food: Major Diversified | $20.8 | 56 | 92 | 6.3% | 2.9% | 9.2% |
| 18 | Unum Group | UNM | $93.22 | Multi-Line Insurance | $14.7 | 74 | 91 | 2.2% | 6.9% | 9.1% |
| 19 | M&T Bank | MTB | $253.97 | Regional Banks | $36.6 | 73 | 91 | 2.4% | 6.7% | 9.1% |
| 20 | Regions Financial | RF | $31.76 | Major Banks | $27.0 | 68 | 89 | 3.8% | 4.6% | 8.4% |
| 21 | HP Inc. | HPQ | $30.15 | IT Services | $28.6 | 93 | 89 | 3.8% | 4.5% | 8.3% |
| 22 | Blue Owl Capital | OWL | $12.27 | Investment Managers | $19.7 | 87 | 88 | 7.3% | 0.8% | 8.1% |
| 23 | SFL Corp | SFL | $12.37 | Marine Shipping | $1.8 | 66 | 87 | 7.3% | 0.6% | 7.8% |
| 24 | Wells Fargo | WFC | $88.23 | Major Banks | $266.4 | 60 | 87 | 2.3% | 5.6% | 7.8% |
| 25 | Truist Financial | TFC | $52.97 | Regional Banks | $64.7 | 59 | 87 | 3.9% | 3.9% | 7.8% |
| 26 | MPLX LP | MPLX | $59.21 | Oil & Gas Pipelines | $59.6 | 53 | 87 | 7.3% | 0.5% | 7.8% |
| 27 | T. Rowe Price | TROW | $110.36 | Investment Managers | $23.7 | 60 | 87 | 4.7% | 3.0% | 7.7% |
| 28 | Macy's | M | $23.57 | Department Stores | $6.3 | 67 | 86 | 3.2% | 4.3% | 7.5% |
| 29 | Match Group | MTCH | $37.89 | Internet Software/Services | $8.6 | 63 | 86 | 2.1% | 5.3% | 7.5% |
| 30 | First Bancorp | FBP | $29.59 | Regional Banks | $4.5 | 85 | 85 | 2.7% | 4.7% | 7.4% |
| 31 | Energizer | ENR | $22.91 | Household/Personal Care | $1.6 | 78 | 85 | 5.3% | 2.1% | 7.4% |
| 32 | Campbell's | CPB | $23.19 | Food: Specialty/Candy | $6.9 | 52 | 84 | 6.7% | 0.3% | 7.0% |
| 33 | Aflac | AFL | $121.57 | Multi-Line Insurance | $60.7 | 54 | 84 | 2.0% | 4.9% | 6.9% |
| 34 | Bank OZK | OZK | $52.41 | Regional Banks | $5.9 | 61 | 84 | 3.6% | 3.3% | 6.9% |
| 35 | Principal Financial | PFG | $114.51 | Investment Managers | $24.6 | 72 | 84 | 2.9% | 3.9% | 6.8% |
| 36 | Prudential Financial | PRU | $125.00 | Life/Health Insurance | $43.0 | 82 | 83 | 4.5% | 2.3% | 6.8% |
| 37 | Prosperity Banc | PB | $74.89 | Regional Banks | $9.0 | 58 | 82 | 3.2% | 3.3% | 6.6% |
| 38 | Owens Corning | OC | $153.54 | Containers/Packaging | $12.3 | 85 | 82 | 2.0% | 4.5% | 6.6% |
| 39 | Chevron | CVX | $200.83 | Integrated Oil | $390.6 | 59 | 82 | 3.6% | 2.9% | 6.5% |
| 40 | Booz Allen Hamilton | BAH | $77.64 | Commercial Services | $9.4 | 52 | 82 | 3.0% | 3.5% | 6.5% |
| 41 | Becton, Dickinson | BDX | $183.04 | Medical Specialties | $49.6 | 77 | 82 | 2.3% | 4.2% | 6.5% |
| 42 | Kraft Heinz | KHC | $25.39 | Food: Major Diversified | $30.1 | 59 | 81 | 6.3% | 0.1% | 6.4% |
| 43 | KeyCorp | KEY | $23.24 | Major Banks | $24.5 | 60 | 81 | 3.6% | 2.8% | 6.4% |
| 44 | Robert Half | RHI | $42.79 | Personnel Services | $4.5 | 96 | 80 | 5.4% | 0.8% | 6.2% |
| 45 | HF Sinclair | DINO | $92.65 | Oil Refining/Marketing | $16.3 | 93 | 80 | 2.3% | 3.8% | 6.1% |
| 46 | Eastern Bankshares | EBC | $23.59 | Regional Banks | $5.4 | 73 | 78 | 2.6% | 3.3% | 5.9% |
| 47 | Diamondback Energy | FANG | $202.74 | Oil & Gas Production | $55.9 | 58 | 78 | 2.2% | 3.6% | 5.9% |
| 48 | United Bankshares | UBSI | $49.11 | Regional Banks | $6.7 | 68 | 77 | 3.1% | 2.7% | 5.8% |
| 49 | Cognizant Tech | CTSH | $58.86 | IT Services | $26.7 | 62 | 77 | 2.2% | 3.5% | 5.7% |
| 50 | Versant Media | VSNT | $39.39 | Cable/Satellite TV | $5.4 | 54 | 77 | 3.9% | 1.9% | 5.7% |
Data source: FactSet
- Lead Analyst: Robert Reid, Senior Equity Analyst, Briefing.com
Yield Leaders content can be found on the Stock Ideas page, located within the Investing & Trading menu. On Live In Play, all of the Yield Leaders content can be searched for, and have alerts generated by, the "YIELD" ticker. Comments or suggestions? Please send them to rreid@briefing.com.
