My choice for next week Techna (TECH).
TECH retreated today to 33 3/8 (after I bought 1 k at 34, of course). On October 23 it announced earnings 50% higher than same Q last year
biz.yahoo.com
and up 6% from estimates. The stock hit over $40 but has retreated to below its preannouncement price. TECH has a float of ~4.3 million shares and average trade per day of only 26,000 shares and it traded only 28,000 shares today despite being down 1 7/8. It is now near its lower Bollinger band and well below its moving average but has been in an overall up trend most of the year.
207.95.154.130
Rudy: Stock in TECH is splitting 2 for 1 on November 11 of this week so PLEASE don't give me a 50% loss off the bat. I only take 50% losses on REAL stocks like WDC and APM!
TECH is in an industry similar to my company, Molecular Probes (not publicly traded), and we had an unexpected 20% growth over our all time single month sales record in October (in 22 yeasr of business) and 30% over our predicted sales for October in what is typically our weakest quarter. Most of this will go to the bottom line for companies such as TECH and mine (which is fortunate considering my huge losses this past quarter). Funding of research activities by industry is strong and predictable (I read yesterday up about 9% over last year) and TECH may benefit too by increased sales of research reagents. TECH has shown steady growth in its product line and share price until the last week or so when it was hit by market volatility too, exascerbated by its low trading volumes. TECH's sales are in an area in which it has relatively little competition in the research market.
If the market recovers next week, then I would also predict that TECH would recover by perhaps 10% or more to >$36.
My reasons for the choice: looks temporarily oversold to me (today's drop was on low volume), stable and growing market, unique products, good long term potential, good recent earnings growth, possible positive effect of stock split this week.
Beyond that, TECH has announced a share repurchase program:
On a final note, in 1997, the Company purchased and retired 127,300 shares of Techne common stock for $3,225,205. Since the announcement of its $5 million stock repurchase program in May 1995, a total of $4,532,164 has been spent on the repurchase of 208,500 shares of stock. On April 18, 1997 the Board of Directors approved an additional $5 million to be used in the stock repurchase program
At current price of ~$33, this would be about 150,000 shares or about 7% of the total stock. |
