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A BABY'S FIRST WORDS: ''BUY-BUY''
(MONEY Magazine) – The baby-boom generation is producing a boomlet of its own -- on Wall Street as well as in the nursery. Births in the U.S. reached a near-record 4.2 million last year, the most since 1961. And these babies are pampered. After indulging themselves for a decade, parents are spending heavily on their newborns. As a result, Stride Rite, the maker of children's footwear, shot up 77% in the past year; baby food manufacturer Gerber Products is up 21% and is trading at a lofty price/ earnings ratio of 18.2. Analysts are therefore looking for more moderately priced stocks that have yet to benefit fully from the current baby boomlet. Here are two promising picks: -- Huffy (NYSE, $24.50), the largest domestic manufacturer of bicycles, with revenues of $517 million, carries a P/E of 12.3. Half of Huffy's sales are from products for children ages 12 and under. Its juvenile products division, which last year introduced a portable electronic baby monitor priced at $50 and an adjustable car seat with a $55 price tag, now accounts for nearly a fifth of the company's sales and has been growing by 10% to 15% a year. Smith Barney analyst Steven Handley thinks the stock could hit $30 within a year. | -- OshKosh B'Gosh (recently traded over the counter at $39.75) gets more than 90% of its $323 million in revenues from sales of its well-known bib overalls and other togs for children ages six months to six years. In a shrewd move last December, the company began selling children's clothing through Sears and J.C. Penney. Sales at those stores alone will reach $65 million this year, according to Prudential-Bache analyst Deborah Bronston. Mike Hamilton, an analyst at the Leuthold Group in Minneapolis, thinks the stock, which trades at a P/E of 15.7, could climb as high as $50 in the next 12 months. |
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