First up this month, I have CVD Equipment (NASDAQ: CVV ), a manufacturer of the
gear behind tomorrow's futuristic nanotechnologies, including solar cells,
electronic components, carbon nanotubes, LEDS and smart material coatings. But
what really has the company in investor headlines lately is its involvement with
graphene, the thinnest and toughest material ever produced. Graphene is a
one-atom-thick layer of carbon. Academics have recently figured out how to
manipulate the way the material conducts electricity, a breakthrough that opens
the door to its use in computers, since graphene conducts electricity 30 times
faster than silicon approaching the speed of light! Graphene is an
extraordinary material in 2010, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the
Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking experiments with it, and there
are a lot of companies, universities and industries researching it. It's too
soon to tell which of these players will be the big winner, so I want to go
straight to the source and invest in the equipment that all of these players
need for their research. With the excitement about graphene and its possible
uses, its no surprise that CVD's order backlog has soared this year, climbing
141% in the third quarter. Sales in the third quarter rose 119.3%, to $8.8
million, compared with $4 million year-on-year. During the same period, CVD
Equipment's earnings surged 566.7%, to $1.2 million $0.20 per share. The
analyst community was expecting earnings of $0.11 per share, so the company
posted a whopping 81.8% earnings surprise. For the fourth quarter, the analyst
community is expecting 66.7% annual sales growth and 87.5% earnings growth. In
the past three months, analysts have revised their consensus earnings estimate
30.6% higher. Of course, such positive analyst earnings revisions usually
precede tremendous future earnings surprises. Mitcham Industries (NASDAQ: MIND )
is a high-tech provider of seismic equipment to the energy industry, enabling
the next generation of oil-and-gas exploration. Oil companies are increasingly
finding it difficult to extract gas from traditional deposits and are being
forced to look at alternative sources and methods of extraction. With viable
alternative energy sources still a ways off, Mitcham's products are going to
become integral to the maintenance of our energy status quo. The company leases
seismic equipment to energy companies that allows them to get a picture of
what's happening below ground.
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