Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:HBIO)

Oversold at this point. The HART IPO will still happen, investors will just have to be patient.

May put some RL money in this if the pullback continues.

I'm convinced.

Limited downside with good upside potential but definitely not for the faint of heart.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/01/18/im-putting-real-money-on-harvard-bioscience.aspx

TMFRoyal did a better job than I could hope to do explaining the business so just read the article linked above for the business basics. The little bit of insight I have to add is that after poking around HBIO's filings trying to see what I could find on the two segments individually; I could only find individual segment results broken out last year and they stopped at operating income for LSRT. I didn't see any revenue from RMD (HART). I wanted to get a sense of the growth rate for LSRT and decided to look at revenues and gross profit for HBIO going back to 2005 as a proxy for LSRT's growth rate since it looks like RMD did not contribute at this level. I come up with ~9% growth for both revenues and gross profit.

Assuming they could hold operating expenses to slower growth than revenues they should be able to do better than 9% growth to net income. The 15%-20% growth they are targeting for LSRT still seems a bit of a stretch except that with the capital they raise from the spin off of HART and increased ability to raise additional cash maybe they land more tuck in acquisitions to get to their target growth rate. In any case assuming fairly conservative 10% bottom line growth, I think LSRT is worth a 15X multiple on earnings and based on their projected (Non GAAP) earnings of $0.40 for 2012 you get a fair value of ~$6.00/ share for the LSRT segment. Based on the breakout of LSRT in their 2011 10K I get to ~$0.30/ share in earnings or ~$4.50/ share fair value. Based on the implied value of $100M for the spin off of HART it's worth ~$3.50/ share if that valuation holds up.

So my take is right now the market is basically giving you fair value for LSRT alone and what ever you get for HART in the spin off as a bonus. If they hit their target of 15%-20% bottom line growth after spinning off HART you are getting a bargain just for LSRT without the bonus of the HART spin-off. Good enough for CAPS and I'll be poking through the 2012 10K to potentially add a small stake of real money.

Jim Royal

Like the tools providers to the pharmaceuticals right now, management seems strong and committed, and have been buying

I like the prospects in regenerative medicine.

Have you heard about building replacement human organs? Check this out on NOVA. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/bhatia-biomedicine.html
Harvard Bio is the company that makes the equipment for this procedure.

Vanamonde

Growing industry, great financials and one of the top companies in its business. Tough not to pick this one.

Harvard Bioscience's Bioreactor Grows a Synthetic Tissue-Engineered Trachea Used in World's First Successful Human Transplantation

This is huge news, the stuff of Science Fiction! This stock is golden if they can continue to offer more engineered organs.

This one kept on coming up on a lot of screens. It also has some nice Lynch characteristics: small, relatively underfollowed, profitable with growing earnings, small P/E.

Addition to Russell 3000 is probably a good thing for this one, too.

On bleeding edge with bio-reactor used to replicate a human's organ(s). Successfully used in bladder & partial lung...working on heart. Bought back $10M of own stock. Do not want to be a pharmaceutical company...want to provide underlying technology. Added to Russell 3000 Index today. Look for good long term growth.

I just do. I have an extremely bearish view of it.

Debt/equity of 0.20, price/earnings of 9.00, market cap of 166.07 million, Return on Invested Capital (TTM) of 19.32, based in Massachusetts, United States, develops scientific instruments used in biotech companies.

Rock solid fundamentals. Great industry with bright growth prospects in healthcare.

Great margin of safety. Not covered by analysts. All in all a solid growth pick on sale.

Very well-run company, with great management, and an excellent track record of success. ROI is at 18% and ROE is at 23%, according to Finviz. Not "cheap" per se, but about fairly valued right now.

I can't claim to know much about this industry, but my green thumb for this one is a bet of management continuing to earn above-market returns on their investments.

Harvard Bioscience offers services that are integral to the functioning of the myriad of bio-pharm companies.

I am currently advocating a holding pattern on most bio-pharm and health care stocks (although I own MRK, ZLCS, and ATHX in real life), but this stock is intriguing.

Attractively priced, and appearing to hit a bottom. Upside in both the near future, and based upon the business, upside in the long run.

The stock is attractive for purchase now.

Bioscience looks good 26% revenue growth.