Investors with an interest in Waste Removal Services stocks have likely encountered both Montrose Environmental (MEG) and Casella (CWST). But which of these two stocks presents investors with the better value opportunity right now? Let's take a closer look.

We have found that the best way to discover great value opportunities is to pair a strong Zacks Rank with a great grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system. The Zacks Rank is a proven strategy that targets companies with positive earnings estimate revision trends, while our Style Scores work to grade companies based on specific traits.

Both Montrose Environmental and Casella have a Zacks Rank of # 2 (Buy) right now. This system places an emphasis on companies that have seen positive earnings estimate revisions, so investors should feel comfortable knowing that these stocks have improving earnings outlooks. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.

Value investors also tend to look at a number of traditional, tried-and-true figures to help them find stocks that they believe are undervalued at their current share price levels.

Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.

MEG currently has a forward P/E ratio of 17.77, while CWST has a forward P/E of 96.09. We also note that MEG has a PEG ratio of 0.49. This metric is used similarly to the famous P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also takes into account the stock's expected earnings growth rate. CWST currently has a PEG ratio of 3.73.

Another notable valuation metric for MEG is its P/B ratio of 1.53. The P/B ratio is used to compare a stock's market value with its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, CWST has a P/B of 4.56.

These are just a few of the metrics contributing to MEG's Value grade of B and CWST's Value grade of C.

Both MEG and CWST are impressive stocks with solid earnings outlooks, but based on these valuation figures, we feel that MEG is the superior value option right now.

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Montrose Environmental Group, Inc. (MEG) : Free Stock Analysis Report

Casella Waste Systems, Inc. (CWST) : Free Stock Analysis Report

This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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