5 Top Stocks at Half Price

You love buying your shirts when they go on sale. And who can resist a buy-one-get-one-free offer? So when our stocks go on sale, why do we cry about their low prices?

Smart investors like Warren Buffett or Marty Whitman love it when their stocks are suddenly selling at bargain-basement prices. For them, these companies become no-brainer buys.

The investors who populate the Motley Fool CAPS community also like a bargain, apparently. Below, you'll find five stocks whose shares are selling at least 50% below their 52-week highs, but which still earn top honors from our investor-intelligence database. Consider it a BOGO sale on stocks.

Naturally, we want you to look a bit closer at these stocks before buying. You can get low-priced appliances in the dent-and-ding section of your home-remodeling superstore, but their quality might not be so good. Same thing here: Make sure there's nothing seriously wrong with the company before you plug it into your portfolio.

Take two, they're small
It's common to want to bury your head in the sand when markets slide, and hope that when you re-emerge, everything will be better. In a recession like this, maybe it would just be better to go all the way underground -- to search for mining stocks, that is.

The fourth-quarter results that mining equipment and parts manufacturer Bucyrus International reported the other day seemed to buck a trend plaguing other heavy-equipment makers. Rival Terex (NYSE:TEX) said it suffered from a substantial deterioration in demand, particularly as a backlog for aerial work platforms plummeted 67% from the prior quarter. In contrast, Bucyrus reported a 73% increase in its backlog, much of which it expects to recognize over the next 12 months. Sales of electric mining shovels for surface mining drove revenues higher, while high coal prices pushed demand for underground mining equipment up as well. Sales rose 38% in the quarter.

That might bode well for another mining specialist, Joy Global (NASDAQ:JOYG), which is set to release its earnings next week. Back in December, when it released its fourth-quarter results, Joy Global also noted higher demand and higher backlog, even as it said 2009 would fall below analyst expectations. So we probably shouldn't have been too surprised that Bucyrus was poised to pop, since it was able to dig deeper for rising sales and profits.

Still, markets tend to be forward-looking. Coal inventories are increasing both here at home and in China, which is a key user and producer of coal. Pricing has been a problem there, because energy and coal producers are both state-owned, and the government has been reluctant to raise energy prices, even after the cost of coal surged last year. That has some Chinese energy producers considering looking to Australia for supply, an event that shouldn't impact Bucyrus too much, even if specific miners face tough times.

More than half of Bucyrus's revenue is derived from outside the United States, and nearly 20% comes from Australia. Since it has sufficiently diversified its base, it ought to be able to sell its mining equipment wherever there is demand. While increases in inventory and an uncertain economic climate do pose potential hazards, Bucyrus has moved $100 million of its backlog into the first half of 2010, to protect its downside in the event that markets soften further.

CAPS member TSIF thinks there's "head room" for Bucyrus, even in the recession. Before the earnings release, TSIF worried that receivables for the mining-equipment maker were growing at a troubling pace. However, management allayed those fears, noting that the abnormal growth resulted from higher fourth-quarter sales, and assuring investors that the company's collections had been strong. TSIF writes:

In this case compared to it's peers such as Joy Global, I believe Bucyrus has some head room even in this economy. Margins and quarterly growth have been good for the last four quarters. Granted, their customers are really down deep in the mines, but equipment continues to run, and it either needs maintained or replaced. Bucyrus in particular has done a good job of controlling costs and holding debt. From a warning perspective receivables have been climbing sharply which could mean that companies buying from them aren't paying up and inventory is also climbing, both of which are normally not good. If orders are being cancelled or pushed, then I'm definitely early to the game and with the economics many mines are on temporary shutdown. . All in all, however, I believe a few of their segments will overachieve this quarter, and those segments that lag should balance out.

Have half a mind
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