Crane Co. CR currently boasts robust growth prospects on strength in its businesses, solid product portfolio, acquired assets and a sound capital-deployment strategy.

Notably, the Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company has a market capitalization of $5.3 billion. In the past six months, the stock has gained 19.5% compared with the industry's growth of 12.5%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Let's delve into the factors that make investment in the company a smart choice at the moment.

Business Strength: Crane has been experiencing strong order trends across several of its businesses, including engineered materials, nuclear service, core process and commercial fluid handling. Also, the company expects robust growth prospects in end markets like chemical, pharmaceutical and general industrial, driven by improvement in order rates and strong pipeline of new product development programs. For 2021, the company predicts sales of $3,185 million, implying year-over-year growth of 4-6% organically.

Acquired Asset Benefits: The company is focused on strengthening business through acquisitions. In 2020, its investment in buyouts (net of acquired cash) totaled $169.5 million. Notably, in January 2020, Crane completed the acquisition of CIRCOR International's Instrumentation & Sampling business, which has been adding value to Crane's process valve business. Acquired assets boosted the company's sales by 6.8% and 1% year over year in 2020 and first-quarter 2021, respectively.

Rewards to Shareholders: It remains committed to rewarding shareholders through share repurchases and dividend payouts. In 2020, the company repurchased shares worth $70 million and paid out dividends worth $100.4 million. Also, in first-quarter 2021, it paid out dividends worth $25 million to shareholders. In January 2020, it announced a 10% hike in its quarterly dividend rate.

Estimate Revisions: In the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2021 earnings has trended up from $5.13 to $5.78 on two upward estimate revisions against none downward.

Other Key Picks

Some other top-ranked stocks from the same space are Griffon Corporation GFF, ITT Inc. ITT and Macquarie Infrastructure Company MIC, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Griffon delivered an earnings surprise of 50.00% in the last reported quarter.

ITT delivered an earnings surprise of 21.84% in the last reported quarter.

Macquarie delivered an earnings surprise of 25.00% in the last reported quarter.