Though the stock got off to a rough start when it first started trading in 2005, Zhongpin Inc. (OTCBB: ZHNP) shares may finally have found their groove. This month’s volume is the strongest we’ve ever seen from ZHPN, and the overall volatility has settled down considerably. Best of all - if you’re a shareholder - is the 47% gain made over the last four weeks.

Never let it be said money can’t be made in places you’d never really think about as investment opportunities. Zhongpin is a meat and food processing company that specializes in pork, pork products, and fruits and vegetables in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Not necessarily exciting stuff so far, but maybe this will get your speculative gears turning….the company was ranked the sixth largest producer in the national meat industry (in terms of revenue) in 2005. Its customers include China-based units of Wal-Mart, Metro, KFC, Carrefour, and McDonalds. Zhongpin also exports its products to the European Union, Eastern Europe, Russia, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.  

And as far as meat processors go, Zhongpin seems to be a pretty good one, not to mention being a rare ‘currently-profitable’ micro cap. The P/E of 20 is slightly on the high side, but the price/sales ratio of 1.1 is impressive. Debt is a little higher than most investors might like, but nothing unmanageable. Gross margins are 14%, while net margins are 4.4%.

Overall it’s a decent fundamental snapshot, but what the numbers don’t quite show is the company’s improvement on all those fronts. For Q1 of this year, revenues increased by 83.0% (to a record $55.8 million) over Q1 of last year, gross profit increased 69.1% to a record $7.7 million, and net income increased 77.6% to $4.6 million.

With those kinds of numbers, it’s not surprising to see a growing interest in the stock.

But what kind of initiative leads to those kinds of improvements? Zhongpin has turned the art of growth into a very simple science.

What’s more, Q1 may have only been the beginning of a growth spurt. In the second quarter of 2007, Zhongpin expects to open its new production facility in southern Henan Province, which is expected to add 72,000 metric tons of capacity. In the third quarter of 2007, Zhongpin expects to open its northern Henan Province production facility, which is expected to add up to 63,000 metric tons of capacity. The company has also planned to construct a third new production facility with up to 70,000 metric tons of capacity in the western region of Henan, which is scheduled to be put into production by early 2008. For comparison, Zhongpin’s current total production capacity for chilled and frozen pork is approximately 177,480 metric tons.

Tyler Resources Inc. (OTCBB: TYRRF) was holding the mineral exploration industry’s equivalent to a winning lottery ticket, and the winner was announced yesterday. TYRRF shares are up by more than 80% today after the company announced there was much more copper than originally estimated in their Bahuerachi, Mexico exploration. 

How much more? Rather than 1.4 billion pounds of copper, a third party estimates they’re actually sitting on 4.5 billion pounds. The silver estimate went from 18.4 million pounds to 67.9 million, while zinc is expected to total up to 6.308 million pounds rather than the original guess of 248 million pounds.

The news was exciting to the market for obvious reasons….it potentially improves the revenue productivity of this particular site by 200%, or more.

If you’re looking for stories of a high-payoff breakout, talk to shareholders of City Capital Corporation (OTCBB: CCCN)….they’re more than happy with the March-thru-May rally. The move from a low of 8 cents then to the current price of 78 cents is a mere 875% gain.

As most surges seem to go, however, this one was not without its pullback worries. In fact, those worries were a reality just a day ago, as shares found their way back to a close of 51 cents on Tuesday - a 35% retracement from May’s high of 79 cents. But, most likely sensing an opportunity, the buyers are coming back into the picture today, and scooping up the stock on higher than average volume (the average daily volume for the last three months is right around 33,000 shares).

So what kind of news causes a stock to be worth 40% more than it was the day before? In this case, apparently none. The latest announcement from or about City Capital was Monday’s quarterly report filing, which doesn’t even coincide with the tumble from the 70 cent area to the lower 50 cent area….unless some owners were thinking there was not going to be any kind of results that could justify the enormous run up over the last two months. If anything, the news was at least decent enough to inspire another buy-in.

By the way, for their reported Q1, City Capital reported a loss of $1.4 million versus a loss $74K for the same quarter a year earlier. On the surface that’s clearly not a ‘win’ by anybody’s standards, but perhaps investors are looking well beyond recent history.

And what kind of opportunity might be so solid going forward that current losses are irrelevant?

This company is an enigma to say the least. They’re engaged in leveraging investments, holdings and other assets. They build value for investors and shareholders creating self-sufficiency for communities around the country. City Capital currently manages diverse group of assets and holdings including real estate developments, buying, selling & drilling of oil & gas properties. They buy and renovate distressed properties in multiple industry segments and resell them at a profit.

City Capital has no paid employees. All staff requirements are performed through contracts with other entities.

In other words, an investor who owns CCCN shares owns a piece of several major renovation projects. That certainly explains the volatility of the company’s results, and may also explain why the market seems to like the idea so much anyway…despite Q1.

That being said, it’s possible some news from a few days ago may have been behind all the renewed interest. One of the company’s projects - Goshen Energy - now has a well pumping gas at full flow for the first time since Katrina hit in 2005. They also bought a real estate development firm shortly after that, so the future opportunities aren’t just a wish.

On May 7th, when Pluristem Life Systems (OTCBB: PLRS) reached 14 cents following a 600%+ year-to-date gain, shareholders probably thought they were sitting on top of the world. Just a few days before, the company got a nice dose of funding thanks to the exercise of some warrants. In February they got their first licensing deal - with Stem Cell Innovations Inc. And, the organization was really starting to get some attention within the biotech community as well as the investment community. All in all, a pretty good situation.

But when the stock hit a low of 9 cents on May 16th, the scenario wasn’t quite as encouraging….shares had retreated by 35%.

As it turns out, this may have been one of those instances where it pays to ‘buy on the dip’. PLRS closed at 10 cents on the 17th with a sharp reversal bar, and has been inching higher ever since. Currently at 13 cents, most of the gap has been closed, and there’s some good momentum behind the rebound.

Better still, all those investors who swooped in after the 16th may have known what they were doing. On Tuesday morning, we got a double dose of good news. Not only did Pluristem raise $13.5 million in a private placement deal, they also purchased a stem cell technology patent. The company expects ownership of the patent to improve margins right away, but also feels the platform can be developed into an even more fruitful stem cell production system.

For more, click here.

Pluristem is focused on using stem cells to create viable bone marrow tissue for transplant purposes. The size of this market is estimated to be worth $2 billion annually. Further down the road, the company is aiming to widen the net and catch a bigger portion of the $30 billion cellular regeneration market.

The timing on this piece of micro cap news couldn’t have been much better - less than a day after we published a feature commentary about the paradigm shift towards more ecologically-friendly energy consumption.  

Clean Diesel Technologies (OTCBB: CDTI) is rallying sharply today, after announcing early this morning they had signed a licensing contract with German-based Bosch - a major developer/manufacturer of automotive equipment.

The non-exclusive license allows Bosch to use Clean Diesel’s patented process to minimize the toxic gases and other waste normally emitted in diesel combustion. The proprietary process is a pre-emptive move to keep new automobile’s as clean and green-friendly as possible, as emission standards are slowly being raised across the globe.

Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but are expected to include a nominal up-front fee, and ongoing royalty payments for the life of the contract. Clean Diesel expects these payments to be part of 2007’s revenue, which may well mean a considerably stronger top line. Before the Bosch deal was inked, Clean Diesel has only generated ‘retrofit’ revenue. The ‘new market’ opportunity is expected to be much stronger.

While poking around a bulletin board stock information site a few moments ago, I came across a list of the companies that had recently graduated from the bulletin board and moved on to an exchange listing. Considering that’s basically the direction everyone would like to see their BB stocks head, I’m sure we’re all at least a little curious about some of the names making the leap. Well, here are the ones that caught my eye.

Synutra International (NASDAQ: SYUT) moved to a NASDAQ listing on April 12th. They’ve got a market cap of more than $600 million, and some pretty respectable fundamentals. They’re a US incorporated company that wholly owns and operates six subsidiaries in China, all engaged in different stages of production, distribution and sales of dairy based infant formulas and other nutritional products. The stock looked like it was working on a breakout, but volume is still very much on the low side of things.

Protection One (NASDAQ: PONE) moved to the NASDAQ on April 2nd. Protection One and its subsidiaries provide installation, maintenance and monitoring of electronic security systems and fire systems to more than one million residential (single and multifamily residences) and commercial subscribers. This one’s getting real interesting as the volume is starting to pick up on the buying side of the table.

Force Protection (NASDAQ: FRPT) moved to a NASDAQ listing on January 18th. Force Protection, Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of ballistic- and blast-protected vehicles, which have been used to support armed forces and security personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and other hot spots around the globe. And, this stock more than deserves to graduate - it’s up nearly 600% since the time when we were studying it…..proof that there is major upside potential brewing here in the world of bulletin board stocks.

There were plenty of others too…these are just the first ones that got my attention.

One of the things I’m going to try and do more of is study these graduates as the Small Cap Network site truly becomes a network of small-but-growing-stock enthusiasts. Hopefully our current followings will be there soon. Besides, those newly-listed names still qualify as small-caps in my book.

What about you? Any ‘graduation’ success stories you care to share? Or, any thoughts on one of these three companies?