Don't Discard Omrix

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You've got to love a company that makes money from something that it used to throw away. That's one way to get an immediate boost to margins.

Because of contract restrictions, we have no idea what Omrix Biopharmaceuticals' (Nasdaq: OMRI) passive immunotherapy byproducts are, but I'm not sure investors should care. The important thing is that these products brought in an additional $1.9 million in the second quarter -- a 10% bump of the top line. In addition, Omrix has a three-year contract to continue selling these previously discarded byproducts, which are produced when making its other branded products from plasma.

The bonus product was just icing on the earnings cake. Revenue was up 72% year over year, led by Johnson & Johnson's (NYSE: JNJ) Ethicon's 155% jump in sales of Omrix's biosurgical products. Most of that likely came from improved sales of Evicel -- its fibrin sealant used to stop surgical bleeding. The product was approved for use in all surgeries earlier in the year and more growth should be coming with an expanded European approval expected soon.

Management characterized sales of its other biosurgical product, Evithrom, as growing moderately well, but it's still signing up new customers for the product that was approved a year ago. Forty percent of customers this quarter were first-time buyers. Management thinks it's still trailing King Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: KG), but beating newcomer ZymoGenetics (Nasdaq: ZGEN) in the battle of the thrombins.

The bottom line looked just as good, with Omrix apparently enjoying some economies of scale. Operating costs grew substantially more slowly than revenue. Even though the company now has to pay taxes, it still nearly doubled net income from a year ago, recording $0.17 per share in profit.

Omrix isn't the most popular of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers stocks, but grabbing stocks before Wall Street discovers them is often a prudent move. This is definitely one stock that shouldn't be discarded.