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Stock Focus
Amex Wallflowers
Samantha N. Wong, 03.08.06, 8:30 AM ET





NEW YORK--One strategy for the contrarian investor is to look for stocks getting little or no attention from brokerage analysts. These "wallflowers," so the thinking goes, are often less efficiently priced and, thus, present opportunities for bargain hunters.

You'll find wallflowers in abundance on the American Stock Exchange, the almost forgotten number three U.S. exchange in terms of equities listed. Of Amex's 550 or so stocks, 100 are covered by three analysts or fewer. We narrowed that group of 100 down to just five promising bets.

Take San Diego-based Cubic (amex: CUB - news - people ). Thomson IBES, the aggregator of financial information from equity analysts, lists just three analysts covering the stock. Cubic sells a range of military electronics, such as laser systems that simulate gunfire for combat training. It also makes automatic fare-collection systems for mass transit, which are used in cities such as Washington, D.C., Shanghai and London.

Of the three analysts who follow Cubic, only two have ventured a guess as to Cubic's earnings per share for its fiscal year ending next September. While it may be stretching the rules a bit to call the average of their forecasts a consensus, it is worth noting that the stock is priced at 19 times the average of those two estimates.

At a recent $22 per share, Cubic has enjoyed a nice bounce from a low of $16 last fall. Still, the stock sells for only 0.7 times its trailing-12-month revenue. That's reasonable to its five-year-average price-to-sales ratio and the aggregate sales multiple in the electrical industry.

Another company worth a look is Badger Meter (amex: BMI - news - people ), which, along with LaBarge (amex: LB - news - people ) (also listed below), ranked among Forbes' most recent list of America's 200 Best Small Companies. Badger Meter manufactures products used in the measure and control of liquid flow. The company has a five-year earnings-per-share growth rate of 20%.

The accompanying table lists Amex stocks priced over $1 per share with coverage by no more than three analysts. All companies have market values over $200 million and sales over $100 million. Analysts tracking these companies expect positive earnings growth for them in each of their coming two fiscal years.

Amex Wallflower Worth A Look

Company

Business

Price

Change From 52-Week High

2006 Est. P/E*

Market Value
($mil)

Badger Meter (amex: BMI - news - people )

Liquid flow measure and control products

$52.20

-11%

24

$359

Cubic (amex: CUB - news - people )

Defense electronics, transportation equip

21.68

-5

19

579

LaBarge (amex: LB - news - people )

Electronics products, services

16.40

-25

21

249

Park National (amex: PRK - news - people )

Banking, trust business

103.00

-16

15

1,444

Tompkins Trustco (amex: TMP - news - people )

Banking, insurance services

46.36

-6

15

416

Prices as of Mar. 7. *P/E: Price-to-earnings ratio. Sources: FT Interactive Data, Reuters Fundamentals and Thomson IBES via FactSet Research Systems



More On This Topic
Companies: BMI | CUB | LB | PRK | TMP

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