5-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Westport Innovations

Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, alternative fuel technologist Westport Innovations (Nasdaq: WPRT  ) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Westport's business and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Westport facts

Headquarters (Founded)	Vancouver, Canada (1995)
Market Cap	$1.2 billion
Industry	Auto parts
Trailing-12-Month Revenue	$167.44 million
Management	Founder/CEO David Demers CFO William Larkin
Return on Equity (Average, Past 3 Years)	(58.4%)
Cash/Debt	$162.4 million / $26 million

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's) and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 99% of the 641 members who have rated Westport believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include doinitmyway and thirdrock3.

Earlier this month, doinitmyway nicely summed up the Westport bull case: "I believe this company is a buyout candidate. [T]hey have a niche in a green industry converting diesel engines to natural gas, have landed a couple of good contracts and they are working with large players like [General Motors]."

Over the next five years, in fact, Westport is expected to grow its bottom line at a brisk rate of 30% annually. That's faster than other clean-energy plays like Fuel Systems Solutions (Nasdaq: FSYS  ) (12%) and Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA  ) (25%).

CAPS member thirdrock3 elaborates on the Westport bull case:

A company like this with key inventions to make natural gas a successful substitute fuel in diesel engines, joint venture with Cummins [ (NYSE: CMI  ) ], the world's best diesel engine manufacturer, and more ventures on the way should be successful. To top it off natural gas is the economic choice to supplement hydrocarbons from crude oil in light of the vast reserves which can be developed in the United States. Electric cars will depend on power from generating plants which exhaust 2/3 of the energy input to the surroundings, or more unreliable sources such as wind. Alternative cars such and electric and ethanol are cute supplements to direct use of clean fuels such as methane, LPG, gasoline, and Diesel, the source of our modern economic success, but will always be uneconomic (according to the first, second and third laws of thermodynamics).

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