3 Stocks Near 52-Week Lows Worth Buying: Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN), Ameresco Inc. (AMRC)

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Word to the wise: If you ride Apple‘s coattails and Apple gets tripped up, you’re going for a ride.

Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN), maker of the speech recognition software found in Apple’s newer iPhone devices and in the health care market, sank like a concrete block last month after it slightly lowered its full-year sales and EPS guidance to a range of $1.76 to $1.87 on $2.15 billion to $2.2 billion in sales from its previous forecast of $1.84 to $1.94 and $2.17 billion to $2.22 billion in sales. Investors have lopped off $1.9 billion in market value since this announcement. To say I think this is a major overreaction would be the understatement of the week!

Part of the problem relates to health care upgrades, which are moving away from Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN)’s health care technology to Dragon Medical speech-to-text software. While this was unavoidable, it’s also a transition that’s happening incredibly slow, so it isn’t as if Nuance’s revenue stream is going to dry up overnight. Also, greatly exaggerated stories of Apple’s demise and the company cutting back on iPhone component orders has unfairly affected Nuance’s share price. Siri, essentially the voice of Apple, is going to remain a mainstay in its iPhone and iPad and, last I checked, total combined unit sale estimates were only rising.

Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NUAN) is projected to grow by an average of 19% over the next two years, yet it’s only valued at nine times forward earnings. Can you say “Hello, Mr. Opportunity”?

Foolish roundup
This week’s theme is all about inference. It may not be blatantly obvious that GTAT and Ameresco are going to benefit from Obama’s energy initiatives, or that Nuance is going to come out smelling like a rose even with Apple’s woes, but the tools for success are clearly visible in all three cases.

The article 3 Stocks Near 52-Week Lows Worth Buying originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Sean Williams has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Nuance Communications. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended Ameresco, Apple, and Nuance Communications.

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