Top stocks with 5 percent growth: Pro

Forget about companies with good dividends and good balance sheets. The ones with strong top-line growth ahead are the ones to buy, Sarat Sethi of Douglas C. Lane & Associates said Friday.

"We're adding to Ford, we're adding to GM. We're adding to Johnson Controls," he said.

On CNBC's "Fast Money, Sethi explained why.

"These are companies that are going to grow top line," he said. "In our view, in the next couple of years, is all these companies we talked about, these are the ones that you want who are going to grow, not just have good dividends, good balance sheets and be 2, 3 percent growers.

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"I want 5 percent growers that can actually add to the bottom line because as rates go up, which we don't know how far they're going to go or when they will, but they will."

In addition to the auto industry, Sethi also liked the airlines, regardless of what happens with the proposed merger between American Airlines and US Airways.

"It doesn't really matter for us," he said. "Actually, if they don't consolidate, Delta and United are much better positioned because US Air and American will not have the capital to refurbish their airplanes."

Delta and United, he added, hold monopolies on the most-profitable routes.

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Sethi's top holdings included Delta, Ford, United, BorgWarner, Johnson Controls, Visa, Qualcomm and General Electric.

The economy would likely grow around "2-plus precent," Sethi said.

"But the idea that these are secular growth companies within an economy that might not have to be raging because they have good products, good management and good top-line growth.

"What I'm afraid of is where you're seeing people who have substituted dividend stocks for bonds. You're not going to get the 'sell' from here. You're actually going to get multiple expansion as opposed to compression on the other side."

— By CNBC's Bruno J. Navarro. Follow him on Twitter @Bruno_J_Navarro.