For those who like value stocks, the FTSE 100 can be a great place to find investment opportunities. Within the index today, there are tons of shares trading at bargain-basement prices.

But what are the cheapest stocks in the Footsie right now? Let’s take a look.

Searching for cheap shares

When looking for cheap stocks, we can’t just go by share price. Ultimately, share price is a pretty meaningless number.

What we can do, however, is look at price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. This ratio allows us to easily compare companies’ valuations by examining their share prices relative to their earnings per share.

So, in order to find the cheapest stocks in the FTSE 100, I sorted all the stocks in the index by their P/E ratios. I used trailing 12-month earnings per share to standardise things further.

Here’s what I found.

The top (or maybe bottom) 5

The cheapest five stocks (excluding investment trusts) according to my data provider were:

• British Airways owner IAG (P/E ratio of 4.1)
• British Gas owner Centrica (4.3)
• Oil major BP (5.5)
• Risk insurance and reinsurance company Beazley (LSE: BEZ) (5.8)
• Telecoms giant BT (6.4)

Overall, we have an interesting mix of companies here.

Are they worth buying?

Are these Footsie stocks worth buying?

Well, personally, I won’t be buying them. That’s because I prefer to invest in ‘quality’ stocks over cheap stocks since the latter are often cheap for a reason.

But if I was a diehard value investor, I might be interested in a couple of them.

For me, the pick of the bunch is insurer Beazley.

One reason for this is that it has a strong track record when it comes to generating wealth for investors (as the chart below shows).

A few of the other companies, including IAG and BT, have terrible track records here (airlines have historically been very poor long-term investments).

Another reason is that the company has been performing really well recently. Last year, for example, pre-tax profit was up 115% to $1,254m.

On the back of this performance, the company launched a $325m share buyback.

We are well positioned to continue successfully growing our business and I remain confident that Beazley will see strong, long-term performance.

CEO Adrian Cox in Beazley’s 2023 results

Of course, there are no guarantees that this stock will perform well going forward, even with its low valuation.

Insurance companies face all kinds of risks and profits can be volatile at times. Looking ahead, the company could face a spike in claims, sending its profits and share price down.

All things considered, however, I think the stock has the potential to be a solid long-term investment.

It’s worth noting that analysts at Barclays have a price target of 920p for the stock. That’s nearly 40% above the current share price.