Topic: How To Invest

Pat: I have held Northstar Aerospace for years. What do you think of it now? Thanks in advance for your input!

Article Excerpt

Northstar Aerospace Inc., $0.74, symbol NAS on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 30.7 million; Market cap: $22.7 million; www.nsaero.com), makes a wide variety of parts for airplanes and helicopters, including gears, gearboxes, rotor shafts and transmissions. The company is based in Chicago, but it has plants in Ontario, Illinois and Arizona. Northstar gets about 80% of its revenue by selling parts to military-related customers, such as the U.S. Department of Defense and Boeing. The remaining 20% comes from commercial aircraft customers, including General Electric Aviation, Honeywell and Rolls-Royce. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, Northstar’s revenue rose 7.1%, to $45.9 million from $49.4 million a year earlier (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). Defense sales rose 2.8%, but commercial sales fell 31.2%, due to lower demand from Honeywell and Rolls-Royce. Northstar earned just $10,000, or nil per share, in the quarter. Still, that’s a big improvement over the $483,000, or $0.02 a share, that it lost a year…