From: kanth@andersen.uucp (Kanth Miriyala)
Subject: PRAGATI - January 1993
Organization: Andersen Consulting
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:25:49 GMT


PRAGATI - January 1993			- BY MIRIYALAS

CONTENTS
	- INTRODUCTION
	- RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE MONTH
	     Devon Group
	     MTC Electronic Technologies
	     New Image Industries
	     Quarex Industries Inc.
	- SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
	- BASICS OF STOCKS: CHAPTER 2. HOW TO READ STOCK TABLES?
	- GENERAL INFORMATION 
	(This information is mainly meant for the 
	new reader. Regular readers of PRAGATI may 
	safely skip it.)
	- DISCLAIMER

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the January issue of Pragati. We wish all 
our subscribers a very happy, prosperous and profitable
New Year 1993.

In this issue our tutorial section is about stock tables and how to read
stock tables.



RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE MONTH


We have four new recommendations for this month:
Devon Group
MTC Electronic Technologies
New Image Industries
Quarex Industries Inc.

Name of the Company: Devon Group 
Symbol: DEVN
Exchange: NASDAQ
Can be followed in: IBD, WSJ, Barron's.
Phone: (203) 964-1444
Address: Six Stamford Forum, Stamford, Connecticut 06901-3227
52 wk Hi Lo: 4.19, 12.75 
Recent Price:  Closed 12.13 on Dec 31, 1992
Recommended Price: Stop buy 12-7/8
Stop Loss: 10-7/8
Description: Devon Group, Inc. is a diversified graphic arts company
that provides the following services and products: advertising and
editorial production services, computerized typesetting, composition, and
color separation; printing, binding, and related services to a broad base
of magazine publishers; and publishing/distribution of posters, art
reproductions, original art, note cards, calendars, and related products. 

The Company's Black Dot Graphics, Inc. subsidiary is one of the nation's 
largest suppliers of pre-press services in design, photography,
illustration, copywriting, electronic composition, color separation, and 
advertising typography. Black Dot provides high-quality services 
through proprietary typesetting software and the integration of
traditionally separate pre-press services. The Company's Graftek Press,
Inc. subsidiary provides high-quality color printing, binding, and related
services primarily to the publishers of trade and special-interest
magazines. Devon Publishing Group is one of the nation's largest publishers
of posters, art reproductions, original art, calendars, note cards, and
related products. 

Reasons:
- The company has an excellent balance sheet with a low long-term 
debt (about 6.5 M).
- For the quarter ended September 30, 1992, it came out
with excellent earnings:
		3 mos to 	3 mos to
		Sept 92		Sept 91
Revenues	44.6 M		37.9 M
Net Income	3.5 M		1.2 M
EPS		0.49		0.17
Avg. Shares	7.1 M		7.1 M
- Revenues have increased and overhead costs were relatively constant. 
Therefore, net income shot up. So if the revenues increase continues, 
this company should be raking up good profits in future too. 


Name of the Company: MTC Electronic Technologies.
Symbol: MTCEF 
Exchange: NASDAQ NMS
Phone: (604) 278-8788
Address: 2580 Viscount Way, Richmond, BC V6V 2G8 
52 wk Hi Lo: 4.5, 30
Current Price: Closed at 21.75 on Dec 31, 1992
Recommended Price: stop buy at 22-3/8 
Stop Loss: stop sell at 19-3/8 
Description: 
MTC Electronic Technologies is a Canadian-based communications and
distribution company serving the consumer electronics, facsimile and
cellular telephone industries. The Company distributes a broad line of
consumer electronic products in Canada, Mexico and the US and is involved
in joint ventures with government divisions of the People's Republic of
China to develop, implement and operate cellular telephone networks and to
construct and operate a facsimile manufacturing facility in that nation.

Reasons:
- It has had a tremendous run-up recently, shooting up from around $6 
to $30 before pulling back to $20. 
- The company came out with excellent earnings recently. 



Name of the Company: New Image Industries.
Symbol: NIIS 
Exchange: NASDAQ NMS
Phone: (818) 702-0285
Address: 21218 Vanowen St., Canoga Park, CA 91303. 
52 wk Hi Lo:  
Recent Price: It closed on Monday January 4, 1993 at  
Recommended Price: Stop buy at 19-1/8   
Stop Loss: Stop sell at 16-7/8
Description: New Image markets a family of computer imaging systems primarily 
to the dental marketplace. Its product called the AcuCam is an intraoral
video camera that can be used by dentists to explore the hard-to-see 
areas of a patient's. The AcuCam includes a high-quality camera body and 
fiber-optic light rod with interchangeable 45 degree and 90 degree macro lenses built into a unit. The camera unit also includes a an image control processor 
and a halogen light source. Through fiscal year 1991, the company had sold
142 of the systems.

In October 1989, New Image acquired the rights to certain software
that has been used to develop the New Image Preview  Imaging System.
The system allows dentists to visually communicate to the patients the 
potential results of cosmetic dentistry procedures.  The dentist uses the
video camera to take a picture of the patient, whose image is input into the
system and appears on a screen. The image can then be altered and printed to
view a before and after picture of the potential outcome of a suggested
procedure. 

The company also markets the DentalView combination IntraOral Camera and 
Imaging system which essentially combines the AcuCam and New Image Preview.
During fiscal 1991, the company introduced the system 2000, a fully
automated imaging system designed for the beauty industry that is part
of a club New Image program. The club membership ranges from $19.95 to $74.95 
and entitles its members to use the system at any participating salon.

Reasons:
- Earnings for the quarter ended September, 1992 were as follows:
	     3 mos to    3 mos to    
             Sept 92     Sept 91
Revenues     5.4 M	 2.1 M 
Net Income   796 K       -812 K 
EPS          .20         -.21
Avg. Shares  4 M         3.9 M

-  The company has a low long term debt of $194,000.
-  During fiscal 1991, the company  undertook a major restructuring in
   an effort to reduce costs by discontinuing certain products and focusing
   on its dental products and club New Image. 
-  It has very good fundamentals, having a good balance sheet and
   lying at the intersection of several hot areas (dental, imaging, 
   and cosmetic areas)


Name of the Company: Quarex Industries. 
Symbol: QRXI
Exchange: NASDAQ NMS
Phone: (718) 821-0011
Address: 47-05 Metropolitan Ave., Ridgewood, NY 11385
52 wk Hi Lo: 3-5/8, 7-3/8 
Recent price: On friday it traded at unusually large volume and ended at
5-7/8. The high for the day was 6-1/4 
Recommended price: Stop buy at 6-3/8
Stop Loss: Stop sell at 5-5/8
Description: Through its subsidiaries the company operates a wholesale
meat and poultry business, a wholesale grocery business and 
warehouse-type retail food stores in the New York metropolitan area. 
It also has a trucking subsidiary that hauls goods for the company 
and outside customers. In February 1992, the company completed the 
acquisition of PSL Foods Inc., which owns six Western Beef supermarkets, 
in exchange for 1.4 million common shares. Pro forma earnings for the
combined companies in 1991 were $3.8 million ($0.77 a share) on 
net sales of $270 million.

Reasons: 
- Earnings for quarter ended Sept 1992 were as follows.
	     3 mos to     3 mos to 	12 mos to	12 mos to
	     Sept 92      Sept 91	Sept 92		Sept 91
Revenues     79.6 M       68 M		227 M		198 M
Net Income   1.4 M        1.2 1.2 M	3.58 M		3.22 M	
EPS          .29          .25		.72		.65
Avg. Shares  4.9 M       4.9 M 		4.9 M		4.9 M

Net income for quarter and year ending Sept 92 includes an extraordinary
income of $487 K.
- The meat products industry group did well in 1992 (this group tracked
by the Investor's Business Daily went up 26% in the year).

***********************************
BASICS OF STOCKS

Copyright: Kanth and Shaku Miriyala
***********************************

A warning to the experienced investor.

Our goal in the BASICS OF STOCKS is to help newcomers 
to the field to quickly and clearly understand the 
business of stocks. It might be of little or no use to 
experienced investors like you. We welcome you to read and comment
on it though.  We have deliberately tried to avoid
much of the jargon. However, if you find any factual errors
please let us know! We will correct our mistakes in 
future issues and acknowledge you by name (unless, of course, 
you explicitly state that you want to remain anonymous).

*****************************************
CHAPTER 2.

HOW TO READ STOCK TABLES?
*****************************************


The single most important activity of every investor in stocks
each day is reading the stock tables to figure out how the stocks
in his or her portfolio are doing. Therefore, it is a good idea
to quickly understand how to read the stock tables.

Almost every newspaper publishes stock tables every day.
But the best coverage of stocks is in the Wall Street Journal, 
the Investor's Business Daily, and the Barron's.
A typical line in a stock table looks as follows:
52 weeks  Stock       Sym Div Yield PE Vol    Hi    Lo    Close Net 
  Hi Lo                                (100s)                   Chg
^ 13 3-1/4 NantuckInd NAN  .. ..    33 130   13-1/4 12-7/8 13   +3/8

52 weeks Hi Lo columns state the highest and lowest prices at which
the stock traded in the past 52 weeks. For this company the lowest
price at which it traded was 3-1/4 and the highest price was 13, in 
the past 52 weeks. The stock name is "NantuckInd". Due to space
constraints the full name of the stock is not printed. In this 
case the full name of the company is "Nantucket Industries Incorporated".
Sym stands for the symbol for the stock. The symbol for this 
stock is NAN. Usually NYSE and AMEX stocks have symbols with 
one, two, or three characters in them (For example, C stands for
Chrysler Corp, MH stands for MHI group, and COA stands for 
Coachmen Industries). The NASDAQ stocks have four or more 
characters in their symbols (For example, NBTY for Nature's Bounty, 
and MGRY for Milgray Electronics). Div stands for Dividend rates
(usually annual dividend rate). For NAN this column is blank indicating
the company does not pay any dividends. Yield is the dividend paid
expressed as a percentage of the price of the stock. PE stands
for the price earnings ratio. The PE ratio is determined by  
dividing the price of a share of the stock by the earnings per share
for the four recent quarters. For NAN the PE ratio is 33. That is, 
its earnings per share for the past four quarters was .39 cents.
So $13/.39 = 33 is the PE ratio. Vol stands for the volume of shares 
traded that day. For NAN 13000 shares were traded on that day (volume
is given in 100s, so 130 means 130 x 100 = 13000 shares were traded). 
Hi stands for the highest price at which the stock traded on that day
and Lo stands for the lowest price at which the stock traded on that day. 
The lowest price at which NAN traded was 12-7/8 and the highest price
at was 13-1/4. Close stands for the price at which the last trade
was carried out. For NAN the last trade was at 13. Net Chg stands for
Net Change which is the amount by which the closing price for
today changed from the closing price for the stock on the previous
trading day. For NAN the previous day's closing price was 12-5/8. 
For the day listed above, NAN closed at 13. So the net change is 
13 - 12-5/8 = 3/8. 

The leading symbol ^ for the line is used by the Wall Street Journal to 
mark the companies that hit a new 52 week high. Nantucket has hit
a new 52 week high, i.e., it traded at a price higher than it had
traded in the past 52 weeks. 

Please note that the Hi and Lo for the day do not necessarily mean that
you could have bought the stock at the low or sold the stock at the high. 
Most stocks have a spread, especially the NASDAQ stocks. For
NASDAQ stocks there are two prices the bid price and the asked price. 
The bid price is the price you will get if you sell the stock and
the asked price is the price at which you can buy the stock. The 
spread is the amount of money the market maker or the broker
trading the stock makes! For example, MGRY (Milgray Electronics, a NASDAQ
small cap stock) recently had a 3 dollar spread! Its bid price
was 33 and asked price was 36. The Hi Lo for this stock was 33 and 36
on such a day; this only meant that someone had bought the stock at 36
and someone had sold the stock at 33 on that day. Thus one could not have
bought it at 33 and sold it at 36. 

Investor's Business Daily and Barron's give a host of other information 
such as Relative Strength (compared with other stocks how well 
are the earnings for this stock growing), Acc./Dist (whether the
stock is being accumulated or distributed), Earnings, etc. 
Barron's shows earnings and compares them with the prior year earnings
(only earnings per share figures are shown). Barron's is a weekly
publication and it marks with an arrow all the companies that came
out with their earnings reports in the past week. For NASDAQ small
caps stocks, neither the Wall Street nor the Investor's Business Daily
give the 52 week high and low trading prices. These appear in the 
Barron's. 

In addition, all three of them (WSJ, IBD, and Barron's) list on a daily
basis the day's biggest gainers on NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ as well
as the largest volume and largest volume percentage increase stocks. 



SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS 

In the following table we briefly present the status of the 
past PRAGATI recommendations. The current PRAGATI recommendations are
appended to the end of the table for completeness. 
We give the company name, symbol, 
exchange, month in which it was recommended, price at which the stock
was recommended, highest price reached since the date of recommendation, 
percentage change in price at the high and the current price.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Company     Date Rec.   Rec. Price    Hi since    % Chng at Hi    Curr. Price 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coachmen     11/92	   10         17.63          76.3           17.25    
(COA/NYSE)
Audiovox     11/92         5.13        8.75          70              7.25       
(VOX/AMEX)
SunwardTec   12/92         1.94        3.25          67.5            2.63       
(SUNT/NASDAQ)
Seagate      12/92         21.88       22.38         Sold out at stop-loss
(SGAT/NASDAQ)
				------------------
				      Stop-loss
				------------------
Devon Group   1/93         12-7/8       10-7/8
(DEVN/NASDAQ)
MTC Elect.    1/93         22-3/8       19-3/8
(MTCEF/NASDAQ)
New Image     1/93         19-1/8       16-7/8 
(NIIS/NASDAQ)
Quarex        1/93         6-3/8        5-5/8
(QRXI/NASDAQ)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dolco Packaging (DPKG/NASDAQ) and Micropolis (MLIS/NASDAQ) recommended 
in the December issue never reached the
recommended price of 12-1/8 as it came
out with disappointing quarterly results. We withdraw our recommendation
on that stock. Seagate Technology got sold out at our recommended 
stop-sell of $19.63. So that recommendation is closed with a 10% loss.

*****************************************
CHAPTER 2.

READING THE STOCK TABLES.
*****************************************


The single most important activity of every investor in stocks
each day is reading the stock tables to figure out how the stocks
in his or her portfolio are doing. Therefore, it is a good idea
to quickly understand how to read the stock tables.

Almost every newspaper publishes stock tables every day.
But the best coverage of stocks is in the Wall Street Journal,
the Investor's Business Daily, and the Barron's.
A typical line in a stock table looks as follows:
52 weeks  Stock       Sym Div Yield PE Vol    Hi    Lo    Close Net
  Hi Lo                                (100s)                   Chg
^ 13 3-1/4 NantuckInd NAN  .. ..    33 130   13-1/4 12-7/8 13   +3/8

52 weeks Hi Lo columns state the highest and lowest prices at which
the stock traded in the past 52 weeks. For this company the lowest
price at which it traded was 3-1/4 and the highest price was 13, in
the past 52 weeks. The stock name is "NantuckInd". Due to space
constraints the full name of the stock is not printed. In this
case the full name of the company is "Nantucket Industries Incorporated".
Sym stands for the symbol for the stock. The symbol for this
stock is NAN. Usually NYSE and AMEX stocks have symbols with
one, two, or three characters in them (For example, C stands for
Chrysler Corp, MH stands for MHI group, and COA stands for
Coachmen Industries). The NASDAQ stocks have four or more
characters in their symbols (For example, NBTY for Nature's Bounty,
and MGRY for Milgray Electronics). Div stands for Dividend rates
(usually annual dividend rate). For NAN this column is blank indicating
the company does not pay any dividends. Yield is the dividend paid
expressed as a percentage of the price of the stock. PE stands
for the price earnings ratio. The PE ratio is determined by
dividing the price of a share of the stock by the earnings per share
for the four recent quarters. For NAN the PE ratio is 33. That is,
its earnings per share for the past four quarters was .39 cents.
So $13/.39 = 33 is the PE ratio. Vol stands for the volume of shares
traded that day. For NAN 13000 shares were traded on that day (volume
is given in 100s, so 130 means 130 x 100 = 13000 shares were traded).
Hi stands for the highest price at which the stock traded on that day
and Lo stands for the lowest price at which the stock traded on that day.
The lowest price at which NAN traded was 12-7/8 and the highest price
at was 13-1/4. Close stands for the price at which the last trade
was carried out. For NAN the last trade was at 13. Net Chg stands for
Net Change which is the amount by which the closing price for
today changed from the closing price for the stock on the previous
trading day. For NAN the previous day's closing price was 12-5/8.
For the day listed above, NAN closed at 13. So the net change is
13 - 12-5/8 = 3/8.

The leading symbol ^ for the line is used by the Wall Street Journal to
mark the companies that hit a new 52 week high. Nantucket has hit
a new 52 week high, i.e., it traded at a price higher than it had
traded in the past 52 weeks.

Please note that the Hi and Lo for the day do not necessarily mean that
you could have bought the stock at the low or sold the stock at the high.
Most stocks have a spread, especially the NASDAQ stocks. For
NASDAQ stocks there are two prices the bid price and the asked price.
The bid price is the price you will get if you sell the stock and
the asked price is the price at which you can buy the stock. The
spread is the amount of money the market maker or the broker
trading the stock makes! For example, MGRY (Milgray Electronics, a NASDAQ
small cap stock) recently had a 3 dollar spread! Its bid price
was 33 and asked price was 36. The Hi Lo for this stock was 33 and 36
on such a day; this only meant that someone had bought the stock at 36
and someone had sold the stock at 33 on that day. Thus one could not have
bought it at 33 and sold it at 36.

Investor's Business Daily and Barron's give a host of other information
such as Relative Strength (compared with other stocks how well
are the earnings for this stock growing), Acc./Dist (whether the
stock is being accumulated or distributed), Earnings, etc.
Barron's shows earnings and compares them with the prior year earnings
(only earnings per share figures are shown). Barron's is a weekly
publication and it marks with an arrow all the companies that came
out with their earnings reports in the past week. For NASDAQ small
caps stocks, neither the Wall Street nor the Investor's Business Daily
give the 52 week high and low trading prices. These appear in the
Barron's.

In addition, all three of them (WSJ, IBD, and Barron's) list on a daily
basis the day's biggest gainers on NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ as well
as the largest volume and largest volume percentage increase stocks.


GENERAL INFORMATION

The abbreviations IBD and WSJ stand for The Investor's 
Business Daily and The Wall Street Journal.
We use ``K'' for thousands and ``M'' for millions. 

For each company that we recommend, we will give the
following information:



Name of the Company
Symbol
Exchange
Can be followed in
Phone
Address
Recent Price
Recommended Price
Stop Loss
52 wk Hi Lo
Description of work
Reasons

We strongly urge a person interested in investing in a 
recommended stock to research the stock before investing in 
it. 

If any of the stocks that you own effects or 
decides to effect a reverse split, SELL immediately. 
Reverse splits should be avoided like PLAGUE.

We use the notation 1-1/8 to denote 1.125 and so on. We use
"-" to separate the whole dollar number from the fractional 
point. 

We usually give a stop buy for recommended price. That is you 
should buy the stock only if the price goes UP to that price. 
For AMEX and NYSE stocks you can place the stop buy order
directly with your broker. For most NASDAQ stocks brokerages do
not accept stop buy orders. So if we recommend a stop buy 
order for NASDAQ stocks, you should follow the stock price
and buy it if it moves up to the recommended price. 
We do not recommend the stock if the stop buy price is not reached. 

The same holds for our suggested stop loss orders as well. You can place
stop loss orders on all AMEX and NYSE stocks with the broker. 
For most NASDAQ stocks you will have to follow your own stop loss. 
If suggested stop loss is touched off but price move right back up, 
you can always buy back the shares.  Stop loss is meant to 
protect against severe losses that can result if price falls 
drastically. Also when the stock price moves up you move the trailing 
stop loss up as well. This way you protect your profits, and you do not
sell a rising stock (thus maximizing your profits). 



DISCLAIMER: There is no guarantee that stocks recommended here
will do well. There is no guarantee that the information on 
which this article was based is correct. There is no 
guarantee that the information in this article is 
correct. Also, the companies where we work have nothing whatsoever to do 
with this newsletter.
The readers should not assume that recommendations 
in future will be as profitable as previous 
recommendations mentioned here. The security portfolio
of Miriyalas may include those mentioned in this issue
and may from time to time increase or decrease interest
in such positions.
Any opinions expressed here are statements of our judgment
as of the date of issue and are subject 
to change without notice.


SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: PRAGATI is issued on a monthly basis.
It usually comes out on a weekend. PRAGATI only gives BUY
and the INITIAL stop-loss (or stop-sell) recommendations, 
but none other (i.e., it does not give
sell or hold recommendations for example). 

If you want to receive PRAGATI every month by e-mail, 
please send your e-mail address to kanth@andersen.com
with simply the name PRAGATI in the header.

Newsgroups: misc.invest