HOME-RUN HITTERS of 2004: Who needs steroids? These pumped-up analysts hit the ball out of the park.

… [Contributing Editor BEN MATTLIN wrote the following reports.]

LARGE-CAP STOCKS

* C. EUGENE MUNSTER

Piper Jaffray & Co. Autodesk (Nasdaq: ADSK) +209.62%

Back in November 2002, Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst C. Eugene Munster was reading his proprietary quarterly survey of 25 Autodesk resellers. When he finished he decided to raise his rating on the company--a San Rafael, California-based maker of computer-aided design tools whose shares were trading at a split-adjusted $ 7.61--from market perform to outperform.

The resellers had reported strong orders for upgrades of Autodesk's most popular software package, the AutoCAD product family. "The new version effectively rendered most of the installed base obsolete," explains Munster, 33, who is based in Minneapolis. "The key catalyst for me was that customers, faced with this aggressive sales strategy, were choosing to stay with the Autodesk product rather than go elsewhere. Autodesk had a virtual monopoly."

Management planned to phase out its software every year, requiring customers to buy subscriptions to stay current. "I did the math," Munster says, "and I realized this could be a huge windfall." How huge? The shares hit a split-adjusted $ 37.95 by the end of last year, a 209.6 percent gain for the year and nearly a 400 percent jump since his endorsement.

A self-described "computer geek" who joined Piper Jaffray right after earning an undergraduate degree in business and finance from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, Munster has increased his Autodesk price target several times. Although the stock slipped to $ 29.68 in mid-March 2005, Munster stresses that customer demand remains high, according to his reseller network. Autodesk's "obit pool," as he calls the subset of customers likely to upgrade in the coming year, is 35 percent higher this year than last. "This year could be the best yet," Munster asserts.--Ben Mattlin

SMALL-CAP STOCKS

* STEVEN GISH

Roth Capital Partners Taser International (Nasdaq: TASR) +361.09%

In the first week of 2005, high-flying stun-gun maker Taser International got a shock. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was looking into allegations that the Scottsdale, Arizona-based firm had exaggerated the safety of its devices and inflated its sales results, charges the company strongly denies. Investors fled, causing the stock to fall 54.67 percent from the time of the SEC announcement through mid-March.

Investors who followed Steven Gish's earlier advice, however, were unscathed. Gish, 35, a diversified-industries analyst at Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach, California, had followed Taser since May 2002. In April 2003 he upgraded the stock from neutral to buy at a split-adjusted $ 0.45, following better-than-expected quarterly sales and earnings results and media reports that United Air Lines wanted to arm its pilots with Taser devices. (Regulatory approval for specially trained personnel to use in-flight Taser-brand weapons on U.S. commercial flights didn't come until November 2004.)

By year-end 2003 the stock bad soared to $ 6.86 (split-adjusted), and it hit $ 9.65 in mid-January 2004, at which point Gish, a University of Colorado MBA who joined Roth in 2000, downgraded it to sell on valuation fears. His gain: a cool 2,000 percent.

But the stock kept moving up. In October 2004, with shares at $ 18.76, Gish judged its price to be "largely unrelated to its business fundamentals" and dropped coverage. The stock ended the year at $ 31.65 as Taser's earnings jumped 324.4 percent, to $ 19.1 million, and its revenue increased by 176.3 percent, to $ 67.7 million. Then came the SEC zapping, and by mid-March, Taser traded at $ 12.37.--B.M.

* JOHN ROGERS

D.A. DAVIDSON & Co. Oregon Steel Mills (NYSE: OS) +249.23%

In a gleaming sector--the Standard & Poor's steel index gained 58.1 percent last year--D.A. Davidson & Co. analyst John Rogers found a shining star: Portland-based Oregon Steel Mills, which was up nearly 250 percent for the year.

In April 2004, Rogers, a repeat winner, raised the stock to buy at $ 7.77. Shares of the diversified mini-mill operator, based just 10 miles from Rogers's office, had risen 34 percent since the start of the year, but Rogers thought they were still undervalued. He was especially bullish on James Declusin, a 30-year industry veteran who became the company's chief executive officer in July 2003. "He helped the company focus on taking care of its customers rather than just producing steel," says Rogers. Most critically, the analyst says, the company reported strong results for first-quarter 2004. From a net loss of $ 0.34 per share a year earlier, OS posted quarterly net earnings of $ 0.28 a share. Revenue surged 43 percent year-over-year. "The company was well positioned to leverage an upturn in steel markets," says Rogers, 43. The Columbia University MBA, who joined Jensen Securities Co. in 1992, is also institutional research director at Davidson, which acquired Jensen in 1998. By the end of last year, OS hit $ 20.29, up 161 percent since Rogers issued his buy recommendation. In mid-March 2005 the stock traded at $ 24.92. Rogers still rates it a buy.--B.M.

* RICHARD ROSSI

Morgan Joseph Corp. Park-Ohio Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: PKOH) +248.78%

Richard Rossi, a diversified-industrials and construction analyst at Morgan Joseph & Co. in New York for the past three years, has been following a broad range of midsize industrial companies since 1972. "Experience," says the 58-year-old veteran of Merrill Lynch and Dean Witter, "helps differentiate your take on a particular situation." A few years ago, when the manufacturing sector was in the doldrums, Rossi began looking for an industrial outsourcing investment play. In late 2003 he found one: Park-Ohio Holdings Corp., a Cleveland, Ohio-based industrial components maker and supply-chain logistics provider for equipment manufacturers. In October 2004, when the stock was trading at $ 19.06, Rossi initiated formal coverage with a buy rating. He acknowledges that the shares had already enjoyed a 157.6 percent gain for the year but explains that he wanted a sufficient "comfort level" before recommending the stock and waited until second-quarter results were in. The stock kept rising and ended the year at $ 25.81.

What attracted Rossi to Park-Ohio? First, its earnings history followed a "classic cyclical pattern" that troughed in 2001 and seemed due for "meaningful operating improvements" in early 2004, he says. That optimism was based partly on the general turnaround in the industrial economy but also on Park-Ohio's recently completed three-year restructuring. In that time the company had closed or sold off 11 manufacturing plants and consolidated 28 warehousing facilities "without materially altering capacity," notes Rossi, who earned his MBA at Seton Hall University. By discontinuing underperforming product lines and adjusting operations for greater efficiency, Park-Ohio was well positioned for a recovery, Rossi believed.

On March 14 the stock fell 16.7 percent, after Park-Ohio posted disappointing fourth-quarter results due to rising steel and natural-gas costs as well as costs associated with Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance. The next day, Rossi lowered his estimates but not his buy rating or his $ 28 target. In mid-March, Park-Ohio traded at $ 21.31, and, Rossi says, its strong order flows and building backlog make it "well positioned for growth in 2005."--B.M.