(FORTUNE Magazine) – Looking for a little diversification? How about a $2-billion-a-year company whose products include recreational aircraft, sailboats, car seats, windshields, handguns, telephone switching equipment, conveyor belt systems, and weapons control gear for the F-18 jet fighter? Lear Siegler of Santa Monica, California, which presides over all this conglomeration, is a profit powerhouse as well. Over the past ten years, its earnings per share have grown at a 15.2% average annual clip, about twice that of companies making up Standard & Poor's 400-stock index. Yet for all that diversity and momentum, Lear Siegler's stock sells at a steep discount, with a price-earnings multiple of 9.3 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ending in June, vs. the market average of 12.2. Losses on the company's Piper aircraft, whose sales have suffered amid a glut of used planes, have soured investors on the company. But Sidney Heller, a conglomerate analyst at Shearson Lehman Brothers, thinks Wall Street is about to take notice of Lear Siegler: ''This company has had, and will continue to have, above-average profitability. I expect this stock to sell at least at the stock market's multiple before long.'' That could mean a steep skyward climb, to $65 a share from Lear Siegler's recent price of $50.75. Heller rates the stock a strong buy, and he's not alone. Katherine Stults, a conglomerate analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds, recently hoisted Lear Siegler onto her firm's recommended list. Bullish analysts expect each of Lear Siegler's three operating divisions -- aerospace technology, automotive parts, and commercial-industrial -- to post impressive earnings gains in the coming fiscal year. Relentless cost cutting at Piper, including the closing of plants, should move this business into the black within six months or so even if sales merely coast along. Earnings should climb in the division's military business despite some Congressmen's inclination to curb new warplane orders. ''Much of the company's military business involves retrofitting older aircraft,'' notes Stults of Dean Witter. Meanwhile the other divisions ought to barrel along nicely. The big contributor in the automotive parts business has been metal seat frames. But Lear Siegler is shifting into a new market for finished car seats that can be delivered within hours of an automaker's order. A new plant within 15 minutes of a major new General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, will deliver parts ''just in time,'' as the Japanese auto industry's suppliers do, enabling GM to operate on smaller inventories. Carol Neves, an analyst at Merrill Lynch ^ who is high on the stock, expects the new seat plant to boost the division's profits this year even if auto production slows. The industrial and commercial products group, she adds, should benefit from increased capital spending by business. Lear Siegler's earnings, Neves estimates, should grow at least 17% next fiscal year, to $6.25, and might even reach $6.75.

CHART: Text not available. Leaping While Lagging Though Lear Siegler's stock has soared since mid-1982, the price-earnings multiple is still low.