Lecroy Lecroy: The Best Little Company You Never Heard Of James Boric recounts a visit to Bloomington, Indiana . . . and how it led him to a maker of electronic tools named Lecroy. You never know when or where you may run across the next great small-cap idea. Last week, I visited my girlfriend, Kathy, in Bloomington, Ind. -- home of my alma mater, Indiana University. On Sunday, we strolled around campus for hours -- taking in the fall leaves, the smell of all the little restaurants on Kirkwood and the sights that only a college campus can provide. After walking 'til our feet hurt, Kat and I decided to stroll into Opie Taylor's on Walnut Ave. -- in the heart of downtown Bloomington. Adorned with pictures of the IU basketball team winning the 1987 NCAA championship and other classic Hoosier sports moments, Opie T's was the perfect place for two IU grads to be on a Sunday afternoon. After we finished reminiscing about the good old days, we sat down at a booth near the back of the restaurant and ordered a small side of their famous fried zucchini. While we were waiting for our tasty treat (read: coronary in the making), I tried to be a good boyfriend. So I asked questions about her family -- to find out more about the "real" Kat. (Hey, it was better than asking what her favorite color was, right?) One thing led to another and I discovered her father worked for a publicly traded company called LeCroy Corp. (LCRY:NASDAQ) -- in Chestnut Ridge, NY. I knew nothing about LeCroy. So as soon as I got back to Kat's house, I looked it up. Turns out, LeCroy is quite an interesting little company. **************** 13 or 14 picks prove, for every $1 Wall Street's best traders make buying stocks, you could make $4.50. If they eke out a meager thousand bucks, you could pocket a cool $4,500. If they make $5,000, you could bank $22,500. If they make $20,000, you could rake in a whopping 90 GRAND! All it takes is just 10 minutes a day! And you can do it all over your morning cup of coffee. http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/MST/EMSTFB29 **************** Lecroy: Oscilloscoped With a market cap of only $190 million, it is a leading provider of oscilloscopes and protocol analyzers -- complex electronic tools that help the likes of IBM, Raytheon, Samsung, Seagate, BAE Systems and Maxtor build electronic devices more quickly and efficient than ever before. For instance... LeCroy works with electronics companies to makes sure MP3 players download songs at warp speed while seamlessly transmitting data to your computer. It works with defense companies to test devices that Thanks in part to LeCroy's technology, your laptop will soon be able to talk to your cell phone. Your alarm clock will go off and alert your coffee maker to brew a fresh cup of joe -- extra strong. Your refrigerator will tell your microwave when to start cooking. And your electric razor will prompt your TV to turn on (to ESPN, of course). In the future, nearly every electronic device you use will be connected to others in some fashion. And I'm not the only one who knows so. Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, told CNN, "The future of devices that don't have some kind of connectivity built into them is pretty bleak. It's going to be the case that almost anything you can think of is going to connect to other things, most often wirelessly." Now, I can hear some of you say... "Come on, Boric. Wireless is old news. This is nothing we haven't heard before." You're right. But let me remind you, 10 years ago, "wireless electronics" was nothing more than a futuristic concept. Cell phones were mammoth. PDAs didn't exist. The term MP3 wasn't created. And the thought of connecting to the Net without a cable must have seemed like a pipe dream. **************** This man has what can only be described as the "golden touch" in selecting profitable options plays. His system of picking and choosing profitable plays has an average success rate of 84%. All in all, Steve has predicted 78 single-digit, 54 double-digit, and 88 triple-digit successes in the last five years. And as you have just seen for yourself, some of these achieved gains as much as 1,202%...in a matter of weeks! http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/OHL/EOHLFB77 **************** Lecroy: A Ton of Potential Well, we've come a long way, baby! Today, 71% of all U.S. households have at least one cell phone. Twenty-five million have a laptop computer. 5.3 million households have wireless Internet access. And the amount of text message traffic has increased from 2 billion to 4.7 billion messages per month since 2003. As consumers, we are demanding more and more wireless functions. And while you may have heard quite a lot about wireless technology in the last few years, it is still a very new concept -- one with a ton of growth potential. That bodes well for LeCroy Corp. While LeCroy doesn't make the cell phones, the PDAs, the computers or the MP3 players that operate wirelessly, it does work with the companies that do. It helps them test and perfect their chips, interfaces and circuit boards so that the end products will...well...work. Obviously, LeCroy is doing something right. In 2005, it reported record revenues of $165 million. And over the last three years, sales have trended up nicely -- growing from $108 million to $125 million to $165 million. And unlike many tech companies we are used to reading about, LeCroy is actually profitable. It made $2.1 million in net income -- good enough for an EPS of 17 cents. And there is a lot more room to grow. According to Prime Data Inc., an independent market research firm tracking the test measurement industry, the market for equipment like LeCroy's is a $6 billion industry. Hmmm... **************** 60 Times Your Money or More on a Breakthrough That's Bigger Than Antibiotics! If EVEN ONE of the drugs this company's currently developing for a dozen major ailments becomes a "first-line" treatment, early investors could easily turn $5,000 into a quarter million. It's already happening, too -- Forbes.com predicts up to $1 billion in annual sales from the company's new heart disease drug, currently awaiting approval... But that's just a drop in the bucket: Soon, every major pharmaceutical maker will no doubt be forced to adopt this firm's genetic technology to stay competitive (giants Merck and Roche already have). That's when this company will practically own the drug industry. Gains of 10,000% or more could be a foregone conclusion -- if you GET IN NOW. http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/VPI/EVPIFB14 **************** It isn't at all impossible to think that little LeCroy could double its net income as wireless technology takes off even more -- as it becomes standard in more than just cell phones, PDAs and laptops. And when that happens, I expect LCRY stock to rise. Right now, LeCroy is trading for $15.26 a share. Its 52-week high is $26.28. And its 52-week low is $12.45. So it's trading far nearer its low than its high. And over the last three years, LCRY stock has steadily risen from under $8.50 a pop. Take a look at the chart below...
If you are a scared investor who can't stomach the ups and downs of the tech market, stay away from LeCroy. But if you are a long-term investor who believes there is growth in the wireless market, this is That's all for now. Best regards,
P.S. Next week I am headed to New York City -- with my fellow co-worker and Whiskey & Gunpowder founder Greg Grillot -- for the annual Value Investor Conference. It costs more than $4,000 to attend -- but I'll get to meet some of the finest investment minds in the world, including Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, James Chanos and James Rogers. I'm sure I'll run across a million investment ideas over the three-day stretch. So make sure you look for next Thursday's Sleuth. It will be a good one. P.P.S. Greg will also be reporting on what we find out at the Value Investing Conference in the Sleuth's sister letter, Whiskey & Gunpowder. It's the only free e-letter on the market that covers everything from the history of warfare to bubbling oil wells in 19th century Pennsylvania to gun rights. Check it out. It's free. http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Sub/Sleuth.html P.P.P.S. Below are a few pictures from Bloomington. What a gorgeous campus!
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