UNLIKE CARS, JUMBO

jets don't normally come with seats. For $150 million to $250 million

Boeing

A year ago I recommended shares of a company that sells, installs and replaces that stuff and more for airlines. It's called BE Aerospace, and it's the biggest in the business, with more manufacturing capacity than all of its competitors combined. The stock has doubled since that story, vs. a 15% increase for the S&P 500 index. I still think you should buy it.

Here are some reasons:

Air travel is booming. Last year global air traffic increased 5.9%, following a 7.6% increase in 2005. It's projected to keep growing at about 5% a year through 2021. That kind of growth is leading to strong orders for planes, all of which need interiors. But actually, demand for interiors is growing a bit quicker than you'd think, because...

Planes are getting bigger. Fuel prices are high, so airlines are looking to make flights more cost efficient. One way to do that is to put more passengers on each plane. Wide-body planes generally speaking, the ones with two aisles instead of one and up to 10 seats across instead of six made up a quarter of last year's plane deliveries. By 2017 they'll make up 37% of deliveries, reckons Airline Monitor, an industry forecaster. This year Airbus introduced the world's biggest passenger plane. Boeing's forthcoming 787, a wide-body, is already the fastest-selling plane ever prior to launch. BE Aerospace says it can stuff five to eight times the dollar value of goods into wide-body planes as narrow ones because, among other things...

In addition to holding more seats, big planes can hold bigger and more expensive seats. Wide-bodies have plenty of room for BE Aerospace's new super-first-class seats, or "suites," as the company likes to call them. Picture a small cubicle with a recliner. They cost around $200,000 apiece, and are already popular among airlines competing to keep lucrative business travelers happy. The seats were designed with that giant new Airbus, called the 380, in mind, but customers like Air France/KLM and Emirates ordered suites for their 380s and, to keep their service consistent across their fleets, placed orders to retrofit their Boeing 777s, too. Speaking of retrofitting...

BE has $6 billion worth of product on the market. That's more than a third of the world-wide total for interior items at replacement value. Seats need refurbishing every year or two and need retrofitting every four to eight years. Life cycles for interior items are shrinking as airlines run more flights with existing fleets, which means...

BE's got backlog. Its total contracted work stood at $1.9 billion at the end of June, and that, analysts say, includes little of the new 787 business. Boeing has taken orders for more than 700 planes so far and the count is expected to hit 1,000 by year's end. That should amount to $1.5 billion in new sales for BE, the company says. Wall Street expects sales for BE to jump 43% to $1.61 billion this year and increase a further 26% to $2.03 billion next year. Add it all up and...

The stock looks cheap. The surge in sales is expected to produce even bigger gains in profits. Earnings per share are seen surging 42% this year and a whopping 47% next year. That's more than triple the broad market's projected earnings growth, so you'd expect the shares to fetch more than triple the market's price. They don't. Right now they carry a 2007 price/earnings ratio of 27. That's only a 60% premium to the S&P 500 median.

Those numbers helped earn BE a spot in our recent Bargain Growth screen. It looks for companies whose shares seem cheap relative to growth forecasts. See our screen recipe for details on the search criteria and use our stock screener to run it for yourself. BE was one of seven companies that made the cut from a starting database of 8,000. Have a look at the others if you like.