1 “Boring” Company Poised For Dazzling Gains

Tech stocks have performed quite interestingly thus far in 2026. The NASDAQ-100 Technology Sector index is up about 38% since the start of the year — in contrast, the S&P 500 has gained roughly 8.3% in the same timeframe.

As impressive as that is, sentiment isn’t exactly as strong as it was in years past. Valuation concerns are ever-present, the fear of an AI bubble has shifted from a relatively fringe position into a mainstream worry, and many investors are beginning to wonder whether expectations have simply gotten ahead of reality. 

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Popular tickers being crowded is the price that is paid for easy trades. The counter to this is finding a stock that executes equally as well (or better) than the headline-grabbing names, but which isn’t overvalued. The trouble is that opportunities like that don’t come around very often.

That doesn’t mean they never come around, however. I believe THIS stock is one such opportunity. 

It’s a “boring” company that could nonetheless be poised for great things — as evidence, may I offer that they’ve delivered earnings beats 15 times in a row? 

Historically, this company was known as one of America's largest check printers. Over the past decade, though, management has steadily transformed the company into a provider of payment processing, receivables, marketing, and data solutions for businesses. 

Now, they aren’t exactly a one-stop shop, but for SMB (small and medium businesses), their growing suite of services is a great solution for enterprises looking to take care of business without having to engage the services of a dozen different vendors.

Have you guessed the stock yet? Here it is…

Deluxe (NYSE: DLX).

Yep. the stodgy old check company.

Are they executing well? Yep, they are. Is the stock trading at a fraction of the valuation compared to big tech names? You bet. We’re going to go into those details in a minute; first, we have to look at something else. The fundamentals are the first thing that caught my eye here.

At WallStreetZen, we’ve built our own in-house quant rating system. It scans 4,600 stocks every single day, and ranks them on the basis of 115 fundamental factors and metrics. Those insights are boiled down into a simple, intuitive metric — a stock’s Zen Rating. Only the tickers that rank in the top 5% for overall fundamentals are given a Zen Rating of A, equivalent to a Strong Buy recommendation. Stocks with that distinction have provided an average annual return of 32.52%.

DLX falls into that category. Right now, it ranks in the top 4% for overall fundamentals. That’s the big picture overview, but we also want to get into the nitty-gritty. Each Zen Rating is a composite of 7 Component Grade ratings, which can clue us in on what a stock’s specific strengths and weaknesses are.

One area gets an A rating, and that’s Value. Safety, Financials, and our Artificial Intelligence rating read as strongly above-average. The C grades denote unexceptional readings: they can be slightly above average, average, or even slightly below average.

Let’s start with the good stuff. In terms of Value, DLX ranks in the top 5% of stocks. Right now, it’s trading at 10x trailing earnings, or about 6.4x forward earnings. A total steal — particularly for a growing company. I also want to point out how great the valuation is relative to growth prospects — the price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio is 0.19x. Once again, severely undervalued.

Next up, we have Safety. This rating measures the consistency of revenue inflows, stock price volatility over time, and how predictable earnings are. In that category, Deluxe is in the top 12%.

It won’t come as a surprise that the Financials rating is a holistic shorthand for the health of a company’s balance sheets. When you look at the 26 different factors that go into that rating, DLX comes out in the top 11%.

And on the exceptional front, lastly, we have our Artificial Intelligence rating. That’s the read on how likely a stock is to outperform from our in-house neural network, trained on more than 20 years of fundamental and market data. In this case, it puts DLX in the top 18%. 

The only area where the stock gets a rating below the midpoint is Momentum. When it comes to Growth, it ranks in the 58th percentile (so equivalent to or better than 58% of stocks, or in the top 42%), and for Sentiment, which is our smart money rating, it ranks in the top 28%.

Let’s sum it all up. The valuation is a steal. The execution is consistent and strong. The balance sheet is verging on being exceptionally strong. Our neural network sees a high likelihood of outperformance.

Now it’s time to look at recent catalysts and events.

Remember that strong Safety rating? Here’s what it looks like in practice.

That’s 15 quarters of beating EPS estimates. Not a single miss. Almost 4 years straight of outperforming expectations. And I invite you to take a closer look at the actual results. A majority of those beats weren’t marginal — they were blowouts. Analysts have been underestimating this company for close to half a decade at this point.

There’s also a nearer-term catalyst that deserves mentioning. That latest beat wasn’t long ago — a month and a week have passed since. DLX shares have lost about 10% in value since then. And there haven’t been any negative catalysts or bad news. It’s simply a case of profit-taking, because the stock is still up 50% compared to this time a year ago, even when you factor in the dip.

I know we touched on a wide variety of factors here, but I’ll try to summarize the ones that stick out the most to me. A company consistently beating estimates, with overall fundamentals in the top 5% of the market, is now trading at 6 times forward earnings and just got a fresh 10% discount. For me, it’s a total no-brainer.

—> Click here to research DLX

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