A small play on a big food shortage
While Caterpillar (CAT, news, msgs) and other giants in agricultural equipment announce big layoffs, a tiny competitor, Art's Way Manufacturing (ARTW, news, msgs), says demand for its niche farm equipment is still fine.
"We have the same backlog as we did a year ago," Art's Way Chairman J. Ward McConnell Jr. told me last week. Orders for one line of equipment -- silage blowers -- are actually up.
Yet Art's Way stock has fallen more than 80% from highs last year, trading recently at $3.70 a share. If business truly is holding up, the stock looks like an attractive buy -- partly because costs should be down because the prices of steel and fuel have fallen. We'll find out more when earnings are released in late February.
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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
