Small-cap value stocks under a $10B market cap

71 of the 75 covered companies have a market cap under $10B, and 45 are under $1B. The median covered company is worth $595M. Only 4 names sit at or above $10B. The buckets below count every company by size, so you can see how much of this universe is small.

Size buckets in the coverage universe

"With an upside figure" counts companies whose fair value estimate has reconciled against a second source. The rest show awaiting reconciliation instead of a number, so a median upside per bucket is only quoted where the count supports it.

A $10 share price is not a $10B company

The two numbers get confused constantly. A share price under $10 is a penny-stock screen. A market cap under $10B is a size screen. In this universe 59 companies trade under $10 a share and 71 have a market cap under $10B, but only 56 satisfy both tests. A company with a $2 share price and 900 million shares outstanding is worth $1.8B. A company with a $60 share price and 40 million shares is worth $2.4B. The share price tells you nothing about size on its own, which is why every table on this site sorts on market cap and not on price.

Size changes what a discount means. In a $200M company, a single contract or a single financing can move the value more than the whole operating business. In a $9B company, the same event is a rounding error. That is why the risk lists on the smallest names lean toward liquidity and dilution while the larger names lean toward macro and regulation.

Sectors in the under-$10B group

• Technology14
• Healthcare12
• Consumer Cyclical8
• Consumer Defensive8
• Communication Services7
• Financial Services7
• Industrials6
• Basic Materials5
• Energy2
• Consumer Discretionary1
• Utilities1

Technology and Healthcare supply 26 of the 71 companies under $10B. Both sectors carry regulatory risk as their second-largest risk category, which is why a cheap multiple there needs a dated catalyst before the discount is worth taking.

The 20 companies under $300M

Conviction is this site's 1-to-5 rating of how well the research holds up, not a buy rating. A 1 means the thesis is weak or the data is thin. 8 companies under $10B carry a 4 or higher.

What to check before you buy a small cap

Small caps are where the biggest discounts and the biggest mistakes both live. Three checks remove most of the damage. First, read the debt maturity schedule: a company that must refinance within 18 months is at the mercy of the credit market, not its own operating results. Second, read the dilution history: a company that funds itself with new shares can grow its enterprise value while shrinking your claim on it. Third, read the risk list for customer concentration, because one lost account in a $200M company can remove the whole thesis.

The most common ways a deep value thesis breaks are counted across the same companies, and the 49 stocks with an F-Score of 8 or more give you a quality screen to run beside the size screen. Every company page also lists the valuation scenarios and the catalysts with dates, so you can see what has to happen for the discount to close.