Yet Opnet's recent financial and stock performance is a far cry from surging Garmin and Flir.
"The technology is called 'flir, ' forward looking infrared, " said former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, also a CNN contributor.
On a final note, short sellers are also loading up on FLIR positions.
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It's been a frustrating year for shareholders in Flir Systems , the maker of thermography and infrared imaging technology.
Part of what makes that story interesting, as Forbes reported last October, is Flir's products and customer roster.
While the federal government accounted for one-third of Flir's 2005 sales, the company is always looking beyond that market.
Rumors of channel stuffing (also circulating last April) didn't help matters either, particularly given Flir's past accounting scandal back in 2000.
Teich argues that the government benefits from Flir's approach, because as the company churns out more products for commercial customers, prices drop.
Flir's cameras are the most widely used to monitor the U.S. border.
And while Flir Systems may not be a household name these days, Teich says the company has plans to build up its ThermoVision brand.
"We develop a product on a commercial model, but we make it military-qualified, " says Andrew Teich , president of Flir's Commercial Vision Systems Group.
As we've noted before, other companies such as Garmin and Flir Systems have used government work as a commercial springboard, with very happy results for shareholders.
That means Flir, which does all its own manufacturing and funds most of its own research, designs its products with an eye on commercial markets and hundreds of potential customers.
In the second quarter, among the new names picked up by Jensen are Altria ( MO), Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc ( PRAA), Energizer Holdings ( ENR), and FLIR Systems ( FLIR).
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"Flir has an interesting story to tell, " says Michael Davies, senior research analyst at Next Generation Equity Research and a bull on the company (his employer does no banking or other work for it).
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