Stock Ideas from Barron’s 12/22: BURL, LLY/NVO, CORT

My weekly take on some stock ideas from this week's issue of Barron's Magazine which hits the newsstands on Monday. (With the holidays coming up, the picks were pretty light this week, so I had to reach for a couple of them.)

BURL Burlington Stores is the stock pick of the week. Barron's cites that BURL has been a laggard among the off-price retail stores, despite a very high 30% growth rate and taking share from competitors TJMaxx and Ross. Burlington has put some recent execution issues behind it and it is a good time to buy with the lowest P/E among peers and the stock down for the year.

LLY/NVO Jack Hough, one of my favorite writers, highlights the good year ahead for the GLP-1 makers, and particularly cites the lead that Eli Lilly has built. But my takeaway is the more important insight that Novo Nordisk is about to have their oral GLP-1 approved by January, and they will have a substantial advantage in this head start and the fact that their pill has done significantly better than Lilly's in current studies on weight loss. NVO is the contrarian pick here.

CORT In an article about top performing fund managers this year, it jumped out at me that one of the funds, Tanaka Growth, had 15% of its portfolio in a single stock–Corcept Therapeutics (CORT). Corcept has a hit drug to treat Cushing's disease, but more importantly it has a potential blockbuster drug to treat ovarian cancer which could be approved this year. Tanaka thinks the stock could rise 150% over the next year or two.