You’ve been benefitting from this company’s handiwork for years without realizing it, and that’s what makes it today’s Stock of the Week.

Food Tech and More

John Bean Technologies Corporation (JBT) is little-known to investors even though they encounter it every day. It is a major worldwide maker of food processing equipment to portion and cook meat, seafood, vegetables and bakery products…freeze produce, meat, seafood, poultry and ready-to-eat meals…process all sorts of canned goods…and extract and concentrate fruits.

The company’s reach is huge—the machines it makes process 75% of the world’s citrus juices and 50% of all frozen foods and sterilize 50% of all canned foods. It is essentially a technology company, employing some 600 engineers to devise better processing methods. It also makes industrial hardware for materials handling—and for the airline industry, for which it makes cargo handlers, deicing and towing equipment, and the familiar Jetway passenger boarding bridges.

An underappreciated blue-chip company, John Bean will be helped in coming years by population growth, the trend of increasing urbanization and improving affordability of food in emerging markets. Revenue of $1.11 billion in 2015 should grow to $1.28 billion this year and $1.37 billion in 2017—a two-year revenue growth rate of 23.4%. Earnings should grow even faster, some 41.5% over the same two years. The firm’s small dividend of $0.40/share/yr., recently yielding 0.6%, appears secure.

Earnings per share: 2017 est./$2.66…2016 est./$2.28…2015/$1.88.

This Week’s Expert

collins_jim-4cJim Collins is chairman and CEO of Insight Capital Research and Management, Walnut Creek, California, which manages $325 million. ICRM.com

Bottom Line Personal’s experts have beaten their respective benchmarks over the most recent five-year period or longer. We ask each contributor to choose stocks that he/she thinks have significant appreciation potential over the next 12 to 24 months.

From the Editor’s Desk

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—Harry Berkowitz, editor