Best Buy (BBY, news, msgs) has weathered the worst recession in decades by selling the gadgets consumers must buy to stay connected.

As the economy improves, Best Buy expects to make a bigger percentage of its profit helping customers navigate the technical challenges presented by the interconnectedness of all things digital.

“Staying connected has become non-negotiable for millions of people,” CEO Brian Dunn said during a March 25 conference call to discuss Best Buy’s fiscal-fourth-quarter earnings. “(Consumers) have little or no tolerance for any kind of disruption if things aren’t working the way they should, and each additional mobile phone, notebook computer and television gives us an opportunity to introduce customers to the world of connectivity.”

Plus, Best Buy expects to reap bigger profit margins selling cellular and other services at a time when prices for PCs and flat-panel TVs are falling and competition from retailers Amazon.com (AMZN, news, msgs) and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs) is as fierce as ever.

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The Richfield, Minn., company appears on a daily list created using StockScouter, an MSN Money tool that identifies stocks with strong growth prospects in the near term. All stocks with Scouter ratings of 8, 9 or 10 are considered for the list, which is then shortened to exclude stocks with a trading volume below 50,000 shares a day. The remaining stocks are ranked on the basis of market capitalization, sector membership and whether they are growth or value stocks.

Best Buy is well-positioned to capitalize on the ongoing shift to smaller and home-based businesses, which now employ roughly half of the U.S. work force. The shift continues to drive demand for laptops, mobile phones and other devices vital to the home office.

Whether working at home or relaxing, Americans increasingly use their laptop computers to communicate with Internet-ready televisions. Best Buy sees an opportunity to help consumers convert TVs into their homes’ telecommunications hub.

“Increasing technical complexity of products is driving a greater need for quality service,” Michael Souers of Standard & Poor’s said in a March 25 research note on Best Buy. The analyst raised his price target on the stock by $5 to $50.

An acquisition of retailer RadioShack (RSH, news, msgs) could provide another catalyst for Best Buy shares, analyst Stephen Chick of FBR Capital Markets told clients in an April 12 note. Chick said Best Buy could have a “strategic interest” in such a deal, and he upgraded the stock to “market perform” from “underperform.”

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At MSN Money, we think our StockScouter rating system is about as good as it gets for those who are trying to decide where to invest. Scouter rates stocks on a scale of 1 to 10. Since it was launched on Aug. 1, 2001, a benchmark portfolio of Scouter’s picks has generated a total return that’s walloped the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ($INX) for the same period.

StockScouter looks for stocks whose business fundamentals, price behavior, valuation and stock-ownership characteristics appear to predict a rising price, based on how those factors have influenced stock prices in the past. The system assigns each stock an expected six-month return and balances that return against the stock’s expected volatility.

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Consider this list a starting point for your stock research. Find more information about the stocks using tools such as our Stock Research Wizard. You can also set up a watch list of stocks to see how they do over time. To read more about the StockScouter system, go here. For more detail on this list, go here. You can find a full list of Scouter’s top-rated stocks here.

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