Zoltek Companies, Inc. (ZOLT)

Great product but like solar the world has not yet decided the earth is dead enough. Unfortunately it will catch on when it is already too late and too far gone to make a difference.

Commercial carbon fiber allows incomparable strength and stiffness at low, sustainable costs. Wind, infrastructure, auto, secondary aerospace, friction, and medical are just the tip of the iceberg of industries that benefit from Zoltek carbon fibers. Lifecycle costs are the golden egg of mechanical efficiency and low cost commercial carbon fibers deliver.

outperform

It has anice contract supplying carbon fibers for Vestes wind turbines. This could pa off in the near future, especially with the push for alternative energy.

Up and coming industry that will lead us out of the recession

Financially strong company with a unique product and great growth prospects, trading 59% below its 52 week high.

obama

Wind power, low price right entry. Not tied to making carbon fibers for airlines like HXL is, so more of a wind power play.

Wind power is a $17B industry, up 50% in the last year.

They have the prefered product in a good market and even with management that cannot seem to avoid lawsuits these guys should be able to make money. Although that is a feat they have only achieved recently. With a relatively low start price I'll green thumb them but I wouldn't risk a dollar in real life. This seems to be a company just looking to trip themselves up.

Questionable management, but the stock is so beaten down and is still one of the better positioned carbon fiber companies going forward.

Carbon fiber manufacturing is a cyclical industry. Just like all other commodities, you want to buy low and sell high. Right now, Zoltek's book value is $9.17 per share and it's selling at a 32% discount to that. Revenues for ZOLT did not drop off all that significantly over the past quarter --- which is very surprising given the massive economic downturn that has particularly impacted the alternative energy sphere. I analyze a lot of solar companies, as well, and I was surprised by how little ZOLT's revenue picture seemed to be affected by this turn of events. It's worth noting that the downturn should theoretically hit them the hardest as higher-cost carbon fiber manufacturers start dumping their fiber onto the market at lower costs.

At current prices, it appears as if the market believes that ZOLT will remain unprofitable indefinitely or that investors believe that there will never be demand for carbon fiber for wind turbines any time within the next decade. I don't agree with that. Even if demand for wind turbines stays suppressed, carbon fiber has other uses and ZOLT is the lowest-price player in this arena. But there's not a lot of evidence that demand for wind turbines has declined at such a rate to lead one to believe the entire industry will collapse.

Insiders have been buying into this stock over the past six months. This is a company with heavy inside ownership with the CEO being the largest stakeholder. I think they understand the business fairly well, and at the current prices, I don't see much to lose any more. Moreover, ZOLT has very low debt (under 20% debt-to-value) and should not have much difficulty surviving the downturn. To see a commodity stock with low debt trading well below book value in a high-growth potential industry seems insane to me.

I was wrong about this at $20. I think I'll be right about it at $6.25. In fact, there's a good possibility it can make its way back up to $20 over the next few years; or even move higher. The downturn may even help Zoltek maintain their moat even longer. I'm going with strong outperform over a 2-10 year time horizon.

lighter cars are the future!

Zolt Time

At this time there is a huge push for Alt. energy as everyone knows. Zoltek has a proven track record and will come out of this pull back better than most

wind

A good CEO who is very invested in making this company grow. Potential uses for the products have not even begun to be realized. This is growing company and as such they will have some growing pains as they expand product lines and grow production capacity.

Wind power

Tacking the top ten rated stocks with the enviromentaly friendly tag