Sutron Corp. Stock Surges on Record Earnings

I recommended Sutron Corp. (STRN) on my website back in June as a possible hurricane play. In hindsight, the stock could actually offer more than that. This $52 million microcap company actually gives investors a potential long-term growth opportunity to profit from some of the problems that could be attributed to the rise of global warming.

STRN provides meteorological, oceanic and hydrological products and solutions that allows for the monitoring and managing of water resources. The equipment works to collect, and analyze data that works to warn us from floods, storms and tsunamis. The company customer base consists primarily of government agencies, and that list is steadily growing.

When the company reported record revenues two weeks ago, it mentioned a great outlook for the upcoming fourth quarter. This was in part due to the company's starting of shipment to its newest client - the Afghanistan Water Ministry. This $6 million deal was highlighted by CEO Raul McQuivey along with two other major announcements involving projects that have already been completed. One featured a deal with China for the Three Gorges Dam project totaling approximately $956,000. The other project featured water level, snow, rainfall and water quality monitoring equipment being shipped to Washington International Group in Boise, Idaho to be provided to the Iraq Ministry of Water Resources. This shipment totaled approximately $2.23 million.

The company remains largely under the radar screen of analysts, but STRN experienced healthy year-over-year (YOY) increases in revenues, gross margins, earnings per share and customer orders which caused investors to take notice. The stock has moved from $8 in June to an all-time closing high of $11.67 on Friday.

One of the only drawbacks to STRN is its particularly small float of 2.7 million shares. This makes it difficult to take a large position as the bid/ask spread tends to widen quickly, and shares are hard to come by. Nevertheless, it may be worth the hassle of setting up those limit orders because as global warming continues to impact planet earth weather will become only wackier and natural disasters more prevalent. All this could translate into more demand for STRN's products and solutions.

STRN 1-yr chart: