Recharged: Advanced Battery Technologies

Every day the sun rises on Wall Street, and a plethora of professional analysts wake to issue new opinions on stocks. Here at the Fool, we use our "This Just In" column to examine some of these picks -- and the track records of the firms behind them -- so our readers can make better investing decisions.

In addition to following professional banks, anyone can use Motley Fool CAPS to monitor the collective opinions of more than 105,000 investors, many of whom demonstrate better investing insight than published analysts do.

Enough top-performing CAPS investors have turned bullish on Advanced Battery Technologies (Nasdaq: ABAT ) recently to upgrade it from the subpar one-star rank it has held for months to a more admirable two stars. More than 370 investors have weighed in with an opinion on Advanced Battery, giving plenty of analysis and commentary on the recent optimism.

Of course, mixing tiny companies with alternative energy and China is always a recipe for volatility, driven by the massive potential in the region. ABT is based in New York, but the $200 million battery maker has focused on sales in Asia and announced two major new contracts for 2008 totaling $26.7 million. In fact, demand for ABT's polymer lithium-ion batteries has created a backlog of orders for the next 21 months and helped the company report record revenues and profits in the first quarter.

ABT was given more street credibility recently when it was added to the Nasdaq Clean Edge U.S. index, joining larger and more well-known clean-energy peers such as First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR ) , Cree (Nasdaq: CREE ) , Energy Conversion Devices (Nasdaq: ENER ) and MEMC Electronic Materials (Nasdaq: WFR ) .

Despite the risks in the young company and the fledgling technology, associations with more established peers and the opportunities ahead in alternative energy have had stock in ABT soaring lately.

But the strong first-quarter financials seem to be the largest motivation for kicking ABT's rating in CAPS up off the bottom. With new contracts signed and cash flowing to the bottom line, a few more investors are willing to risk going long on ABT with 66% of the 371 investors now bullish on the company.

To see what the very best CAPS analysts say now about Advanced Battery Technologies -- as well as the other winning stocks they pick -- head to CAPS and have a look. The community research and resources in CAPS are totally free, unlike analyst opinions reserved for paying clients.

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Fool contributor Dave Mock still can't resist the old 9-volt-battery-on-the-tongue trick. He owns no shares of companies mentioned here and is the author of The Qualcomm Equation. The Fool's disclosure policy tiptoes through the tulips regularly.

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