15 Firms With Potential to Double Profits

Last week, economic woes in Europe had pushed many to the sidelines. With a sense that a fresh crisis in Europe can be averted (at least as seen by the euro's rebound on Wednesday), investors marked up stocks with big gains across the broad. By that logic, a reasonably benign global economic picture in 2011 could keep investors in a buying mood.

Where will they turn? Growth stocks. At this phase of the economic cycle, investors tend to gravitate toward companies with the most robust growth prospects. With that in mind, here's a look at companies in the S&P 500 that are expected to at least double their profits in 2011. If we are indeed on the cusp of an economic upturn that lasts into 2012 and beyond, then profits for these firms are likely to keep growing.

Even as these companies are expected to post solid profit rebounds next year, their share prices have also been on the rise and most don't appear to be bargains in the context of near-term profits. Instead, if you think that 2011 is just the start of a profit rebound, then it pays to look at these stocks in terms of their peak earnings performance (I went back and looked at the strongest year of profits of the last decade for each company). (more)