By Michael Kaye, CFA Earnings growth was strong in 2004, with companies in the S&P 500-stock index posting an average increase of 21%. But suppose an investor could find some names that did even better over the past five years -- and yet were still trading well below a key valuation measure for the "500"?

That was the thinking behind this week's screen. We started with the valuation part, using a measure known as price-to-earnings growth ratio, or PEG (see BW Online, 1/28/05, "The PEG to Hang Your Picks On"). To recap, PEG represents a company's p-e divided by its expected five-year growth rate. PEG takes p-e a step further by relating the current valuation to a stock's prospects for future long-term growth.

SOLID MARKET CAPS. The lower the PEG, the less you're paying for future earnings growth. In this case, we looked for stocks with a PEG ratio under 0.75 -- far below the S&P 500's average (based on projected earnings) of 1.70.

Now for the growth part. We next sifted for those companies that had posted historical earnings per share and sales growth above 30% annually for the past five years. And as a final filter, each stock had to have a

market cap above $1 billion.

Here are the eight stocks that made the final cut:

Growth on the Cheap

Company

Ticker

Arch Capital Group

ACGL

Career Education

CECO

DR Horton

DHI

Hovnanian Enterprises

HOV

Omnivision Tech

OVTI

R&G Financial

RGF

Taiwan Semiconductor

TSM

UTStarcom

UTSI

Kaye is an analyst for Standard & Poor's Portfolio Advisors