8 Stocks With Red-Hot Price Momentum

ROBBINS & MYERS (RBN) shares have multiplied four times in value in five years. The company makes pumps and sections used by oil and gas drillers. The world's rig count grew by double-digit percentages for four years ended 2006, then lulled last year as Canada worried it had overbuilt, and now seems on pace for another double-digit increase in 2008.

Particularly brisk for Robbins & Myers has been sales of horizontal drilling equipment. That's useful when a giant natural gas deposit sits beneath something that can't easily be moved out of the way — like the city of Forth Worth, which stands in the way of trillions of cubic feet of gas. To get underneath a house, a driller can set up a rig a mile away, drill down for a couple of miles and use special gear to cut across. Homeowners who hold mineral rights might get paid perhaps $100 or $200 a month for life. Those who don't are none the wiser.

A recent stock screen for companies that are trading close to their 52-week high prices turned up Robbins and seven other names. Many investors avoid stocks that are hitting new highs for fear of paying too much. Ironically, that tendency might keep such stocks cheaper for a while longer than their profit prospects warrant. Studies show that stocks near their 52-week high prices are overwhelmingly more likely than not to beat the broad market in coming years. A fast-rising stock price on its own is no reason to buy, but it's reason to have a look. Run your own price momentum screen anytime using SmartMoney's stock screener and the full list of search criteria.

Profits for Robbins & Myers are expected to jump 57% this year. That pace of growth makes the stock's 2008 price/earnings ratio of 21 seem reasonable, except for one thing: growth is seen slowing to just 9% next year. Analysts are perhaps figuring that rig count growth will slow again next year. Still, there's reason to believe Robbins will exceed expectations. For one thing, it has by a wide margin of late, reporting earnings in its most recent quarter that surpassed forecasts by nearly a third. For another, it's expanding into the clean-energy craze.

Robbins & Myers operates two other businesses, one that packages drugs and foods (19% of sales) and another that sells giant vessels, mixers and more used by drug makers, chemical companies and paper mills, among others (39%). The latter business lends itself neatly to companies that make bio-fuel, and so Robbins has made itself a supplier for the industry. It also launched products that can help remove sulfur, an especially pesky pollutant, from the flue gas produced by coal plants. That's just the thing for China and India, which together are putting up a plant a week.

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