Some things to consider:

· The average analyst earnings estimate was $0.44 EPS, the company delivered $0.54, a 19% beat.
· Revenue was expected to be $28.6mm, it came in at $35.7mm, a near 20% beat.
· Based on the old estimates the price target is $40, the stock is trading at $35 in the aftermarket.
· The industry average Debt/Total capital stands at 25% right now, BOOM is at 0.72%.
· The industry average operating margin is about 4%, BOOM is at 16%.
· The industry average ROE is 12%, BOOM has a ROE of 38%.

CKCM 1-yr chart:

click to enlarge

● 8 of 10 all time largest corporate buyouts occurred recently

This got me thinking about small companies today which have long term growth potential. This is a small list of unique companies which in my opinion have the potential to continue growing for years to come:

Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) - The market leader in GPS is showing great growth potential, and with many cars still lacking GPS, there is plenty of room to grow.

It is doctors that are the problem with medicine. Why? Because they are human (after all), and humans don't scale, they get more expensive. The trick is to embed their knowledge and expertise in silicon and software and algorithms and deliver it cheaper every year.

After reading that, I instantly thought of among my favorite momo's, Intuitive Surgical (ISRG). About one-fifth of doctors not using Intuitive's DaVinci device said they would like to but did not have practical access to a DaVinci device despite the hospital having a machine. Piper Jaffray analyst Timothy B. Nelson said this suggests potential future sales.

Barry Gitarts submits : Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE) reported better then expected earnings yesterday. Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (ATI) is a more consistent producer with more conservative estimates.

Given the current demand for titanium based on TIE's reported quarter, I am willing to say with a high degree of probability that Allegheny will beat estimates on Wednesday.

Barry Gitarts submits : This is expected to be one of the hottest summers on record. People will be using their air conditioners which are known to consume alot of electricity. The clear winners in this case are the electrical utility companies. A few names I'm looking at are listed below:

Avista (AVA)
Empire District (EDE)
F P L Group (FPL)
Montana Dakota Utility (MDU)
Nisource (NI)
NRG Energy (NRG)
PG&E CP (PCG)
Westar Energy (WR)
Xcel Energy (XEL)

For a related article, see David Jackson's Heat Wave Raises Power Consumption -- Implications.

Barry Gitarts submits : My issue with value investing has always been that it is based on rearview assessment. Most studies favor value over growth mainly because they have been done in hindsight with data flawed by survey bias.

I decided to compile a small list of growth and value companies by sector, and will revisit their performance at a later date. This way we can avoid the flaws that come with testing in hindsight.

Barry Gitarts submits : Not too far off, the first wave of baby boomers will start to retire, and that will help fuel Sun Healthcare Group's (SUNH) growth in the long term. That, in conjunction with the growth in long term care insurance products, should really help SUNH take off.

This is a smallcap long term healthcare provider which recently went through a restructure. It seems to have worked, because the earnings are growing again. Trading at $8.88, they are currently doing $48 in revenue per share. That means it's trading at 0.28 x sales.

Barry Gitarts submits : It would still be nice to own a stock like Freescale Semiconductor (FSL). It is so diversified between the transportation, networking & computer systems and wireless industries. And while the rest of the industry is overloaded with inventory, Freescale's inventory levels have been dropping over the past 3 years.

In addition, FSL's ROE & ROA is 3x greater the industry average. FSL currently trades at about 13x next years earnings vs. 19 for the industry. It's also interesting to note that FSL has beat earnings estimates every quarter since it went public.

Barry Gitarts submits : I like Valero Energy (VLO) because it is one of the lowest cost refiners, which in a rising oil market, will give it a pricing advantage over the competition. This advantage is currently evident by using just about any metric.

* Operating margins over the past 12 months increased almost 5% vs 1.8% for the industry.
* ROE of 32.50 vs. 11.5 for the industry.
*• EPS growth over the last 5 years is 50% vs. 15.59% for the industry.
* Sales growth over the last 5 years of 46.80% vs. 15.59% for industry.
* P/E of 8.44 vs. 16.10 for industry.
* Trading at 7.5 x cash flow vs. 10 for industry.
* Trading at 7.35 this year's expected earnings vs. 14.21 for industry.
* Trading at 8.38 next year's expected earnings vs. 13.61 for industry.

Barry Gitarts submits : webMethods, Inc. (WEBM) offers SOA (Service-oriented architecture) and BPM (Business Process Management) -- tools which are used in the planning and integration of Sarbanes-Oxley and Patriot Act compliance. For this reason alone, it is obvious why this company's products would be in demand right now.

What is not as obvious is the companies main focus, which is not compliance, but strategic business and IT process modeling, integration and monitoring (then rinse and repeat). With management styles getting more sophisticated (Six Sigma, Performance Management), a pen & pad may no longer cut it, and even an excel spreadsheet can get messy.

To determine optimal risk/reward in a deal, Graham used the following formula:

Annual Return = Probability the deal will go through (deal price - current price) / current price

I called Wedbush out on this call and took heat for it, because after all isn't the job of good analyst to provide insight prior to a market moving event so it's clients can get out before it missed its earnings? Of course it is, but with over 60% of the float short, you have to wonder if the clients were trying to avoid an earnings miss or bank on it?

Apparently the CEO feels the same way. After the close the CEO announced a going private proposal at $29 per share, to eliminate the compliance costs of being a public company and to end disruptions in the company's operations caused by short sellers.

The S&P is expected to earn 95.54 in 2007 according to the bottom-up analyst consensus (.xls file). This gives the index a yield of 7.7% (95.54/1246) which is almost 3% greater then the 10-yr treasury.

Credit spreads and a flat yield curve indicate relatively little risk right now, so for the market to have a 3% risk premium over bonds is just ridiculous! In addition there are more companies beating analyst estimates then not, so the 3% difference may turn out to be understated.

One has to wonder why they would do this the day of the earnings, before the earnings have even been announced? Why not wait until after the earnings?

The whole thing smells wrong on behalf of Wedbush, and this could be a great buying opportunity

Barry Gitarts submits: Everyone is now aware of the success of the online brokers. They took the traditional transactional broker and automated him/her, which resulted in lower costs and faster executions. Recently I was reminded of how widespread they have gotten when I was pitching a certain someone with $50 million in the market. By the end of my pitch he already bought the idea through his Ameritrade (AMTD) account.

The one thing most of these online brokers don't do is financial planning, except for E*Trade (ET). While the others automated the broker, E*Trade automated the financial planner. The brokerage part of the platform allows the user to see how much return they can expect for risk, stress testing (how would the portfolio act on Black Monday 1987 or 9/11), and performance evaluation with benchmarking.

One stock that will benefit from this is Southern Copper Corp. (PCU). The stock has come under pressure partly due to the threat of a nationalist running who would have taxed Southern Copper's revenue at 3%.

Now that the threat is gone, it presents an opportunity since the stock is almost unchanged today. With over a 10% dividend yield, P/E of 8 and PEG of 0.38, this is cheap stock for income, value or growth investors. With something for everyone, investors from various persuasions can come together and sing kumbaya on this one.

1. Veritas DGC Inc. (VTS) -- reporting 06/06 -- This is an oil service company that processes geophysical data on behalf of various energy companies that use the data for oil & natural gas recovery. With the price of energy going up there is demand for oil service companies that help in the energy discovery & recovery processes. That being said, I was shocked to find the analyst consensus expects Veritas earnings to decline this year.

Barry Gitarts submits: I have been following Dynamic Materials (Nasdaq: BOOM) for over a year and the whole time the stock has been scary to buy because of its Mt. Everest looking chart. Thanks to a secondary offering by some old bagholders, the stock has sold off the past month. I think the stock has been beaten down too far and makes for a good buying opportunity.

Dynamic Materials is one of the lowest cost claded metal producers in the world. Its main competitor is Asahi Kasei in Japan, which can't really compete because of shipping costs. The industries that BOOM serves are petrochemical, refining, hydrometallurgy, aluminum, shipbuilding and energy. All of which are booming right now.