It’s interesting that in the past year we’ve now seen Atkore (ATKR) come up both as a “value” stock for inflation protection, and as a “growth” stock with good momentum — first when Dan Ferris may have hinted at it for his 10-stock inflation protection portfolio in March of 2022 (the Thinkolator was not 100% certain on that one, just to be clear), and then in recent weeks when Louis Navellier has included it as #1 in his “Top 11 stocks for 2023.” That’s often a good sign, when two different analysts with very different perspectives and outlooks recommend the same stock.

The others in Navellier’s top 11, in case you’re curious, are oil giants BP (BP), Marathon Oil (MRO) and ConocoPhillips (COP), fertilizer companies CF Industries (CF) and ICL Group (ICL), fiber-optic equipment company Clearfield (CLFD), solar microinverter leader Enphase Energy (ENPH), tech testing supplier Keysight Technologies (KEYS), container shipper Matson (MATX), and North European Oil Royalty Trust (NRT). Interesting to see Keysight on one of his lists again, I first learned about the company when Navellier was pitching it way back in 2019 as a “5G” play and have owned the stock since then, and I’m really impressed with their steady and compounding growth. Here’s an excerpt from my update on Keysight back in November, when they last reported, in case you’re interested:

I’ve bumped up my numbers a little bit for Keysight — they guide investors to expect 10% earnings growth, so I’d like to pay less than twice that for shares (meaning, looking for a trailing PE ratio below 20). That would be about $152 right now, so I’ll pencil that in as my “preferred buy” level (which used to be $146). You can be more conservative than that if you wish, of course, the market multiple has come down and KEYS now trades at a bit of a premium to the market, so there’s some patient logic in just waiting for this above-average company to trade at an “average or below” valuation, as it probably will someday (the forward PE for the S&P 500 today is about 17, so if you hold out for a forward PE of 17 for KEYS that would be $135, which, coincidentally, is right around where I last added to this position back in May).

If you’re as optimistic about the company as I am, though, and ...