Topic: How To Invest

Q: What’s your take on Hamilton Thorne as an investment? Thank you.

Article Excerpt

A: Hamilton Thorne Ltd., $1.35, symbol HTL on the Toronto Venture Exchange (Shares outstanding: 131.8 million; Market cap: $186.8 million; www.hamiltonthorne.com), designs, makes and distributes precision laser devices and advanced image analysis systems. It focuses on the fertility, stem cell, and developmental biology research markets. The company’s systems aim to reduce costs, increase productivity and speed up breakthroughs in regenerative medicine (focused on regrowing human cells), stem cell research and its core fertility markets. Hamilton Thorne markets its products and services under the Hamilton Thorne, Gynemed and Embryotech Laboratories brands. Its overall customer base consists of fertility clinics, university research centres, animal breeding facilities, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, and other commercial and academic research establishments. The company’s laser products are attached to standard microscopes; they then are able to operate as robotic micro-surgeons for a wide array of scientific applications and IVF (In Vitro Fertilization, where labs combine the egg and sperm outside of the human body) procedures. Currently, Hamilton Thorne has five…