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 bemoan 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 in the Motley Fool CAPS community also like a bargain, apparently. Below, you'll find five companies whose shares are selling at least 50% below their 52-week highs, but that still earn high 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
The only thing keeping Energy Conversion Devices' shares afloat these days is rumors that the company is a buyout target, first of Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT), then of anyone who might have a bankroll. When Energy Conversion Devices pulled out of an analyst conference last month, for example, the hearsay resumed, but the company's shares restarted their relentless decline when the rumors proved to be nothing more than that.

Collapsing polysilicon prices and weak demand for solar panels have hurt the company, as well as others in the industry. At least one analyst from Hapoalim Securities sees the pricing environment for polysilicon, a key raw ingredient of panels, getting worse, and perhaps sinking dangerously below breakeven levels. However, Energy Conversion Devices did just sign an agreement to supply 4.8 megawatts of its UNI-SOLAR photovoltaic laminates to a solar project in Spain, and industry bull davbeirney predicts it will slowly gain advantage in different markets as the conversion to solar takes hold.

There's no way to slow down the solar industry. Solar is the future, but there are going to be different levels of clean energy before solar. [Energy Conversion Devices] has a foothold in the Chinese market, which is a favorable advantage to hold over competitors.

Say what you will
When your company is in a crisis, how you respond greatly determines how you will survive. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) is often offered as one of the premier examples of how to respond to a crisis, because of how it handled the Tylenol debacle in the early 1980s.

While not at the same level, the revelation of accounting fraud at Satyam Computer Services (now Mahindra Satyam) is another good case. The top echelon was removed, a new owner came in, and the process of ensuring the propriety of the company's future actions has been enhanced.

Those actions ultimately rewarded shareholders who saw the value of their shares collapse after the wrongdoing came to light. The stock traded as low as $0.78 a share at one point, but it now goes for more than $6.00. That's still a ways from the $9.30 it had traded at before the crisis unfolded and miles before it nears its all-time high, but as CAPS All-Star slbutton notes, the risk-reward ratio at these prices tilts heavily in favor of Mahindra Satyam making a comeback.

Investors have fled Satyam in the wake of revelations of managerial malfeasance. However, the business is viable and, as far as the balance sheet can be trusted, healthy. The company is in a position to exploit a major worldwide trend. Whether it is more like American Express at the time of the Salad Oil Scandal, or more like Enron, time will tell, but at this price it is an attractive proposition from a risk/reward standpoint.

While worries about customers fleeing from the scandal-scarred company held back some, General Electric extended a contract with Mahindra Satyam for another three years. That should give more customers the confidence to step forward as well and could make the company worthy of a second look from investors.

Have half a mind
It pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page.

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