This column is for investors willing to take more risk and potentially receive more reward.  The stocks mentioned in this column are not recommended to buy or sell.  They're brought to your attention so you can investigate them further to determine if they fit your risk profile.  Most of the stocks will have less than $1 billion of market capitalization, have more volatility than other stocks, and oftentimes no earnings.  And some will have tremendous stories.

January 8, 2009 - ICx Technologies, Inc. (ICXT-NASDAQ) and its subsidiaries engage in the development and integration of sensor technologies for homeland security, force protection, and commercial applications. The company operates through three segments: Detection, Surveillance, and Solutions.

The Surveillance segment provides products and services for perimeter security and wide area surveillance. Its products include Cerberus and SkyWatch towers; thermal imaging cameras, including DefendIR and Orion, STS line of radar products, and MarkIR, an infrared sensors product.

The Solutions segment integrates the company's technologies and products to provide single source solutions that address various customer specific security and surveillance needs. This segment offers Cameleon camera control systems; Cameleon ITS transportation management software; StarWatch security command and control software; and Callisto, a non-security related product for process management of various supervisory control and data acquisition applications.

The company serves federal agencies; various state and local governments and agencies; and private sector customers in the United States and internationally. It also offers products, components, and sub-systems to integrators in the security and defense industries. The company sells its products through direct sales force, sales representatives, value added resellers, and system integrators. ICx Technologies, Inc.was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

The earnings aren't in the black yet, but analysts expect a positive 2 cents report for the fourth quarter of 2008. For the full year, they forecast a negative 71 cents, well above the negative $2.85 of 2007. For next year, they see a loss of 11 cents a share. So earnings aren't quite positive yet, but they are going in the right direction. For the next 5 years, analysts predict earnings will average a growth rate of 35% annually.

The stock has only been public since late in 2007 when it traded initially at $15.50 a share. In early 2008, it plummeted to $3.81. But it quickly bounced back to the $7 level and has been holding there for the last 6 months. There are 3 brokers covering the stock and their price targets for the next 12 months range between $9 and $12 with the mean at $10.33.
Stanford Research just picked up the stock for coverage in December and started it at a Buy.

The numbers: There's $46 million in cash, $110.2 million in current assets. Current liabilities are $34 million for a current ratio of 3.22. Total cash per share is $1.10 since there are 35.228 million shares outstanding. Insiders own 3.81% of those while institutions have 75.9%. There's no dividend.

Sales were $90.2 million in 2006, then were $136 million in 2007. For 2008, look for $178.2 million and for 2009, $221.4 million. In the last 3 quarters, institutions have been net buyers with the 3rd quarter of 2008 showing 29 institutions buying and 15 selling. Price to Sales ratio is 1.48 while Price to Book is 1.33. Total Debt is $1.17 million. Debt to Equity is .007.

This is a small company that's getting good traction. Sales are jumping. Earnings aren't positive yet, nor will they be by the end of this year. But if the trend continues, earnings should be in the black by 2010. Security will continue to be a growing industry as terrorists show no signs of diminishing. ICx seems to have the right products and services at the right time to help fight that threat.

Company Web site: www.icxt.com

- Ted Allrich