[BRIEFING.COM] - Nordic American Tankers (NAT) is a new member of our GROWX rankings. NAT is a crude oil tanker operator whose earnings are highly leveraged to changes in global tanker rates and utilization. The company is benefiting from a much stronger tanker market as geopolitical disruptions and longer shipping routes have tightened vessel availability and pushed freight rates higher, creating a favorable environment for NAT's fleet of Suezmax tankers.

There are several new additions to the Top 25 this week. 

SBC Medical Group (SBC #9) is a medical services organization providing management support to medical institutions in Japan and abroad across a wide range of healthcare fields, including aesthetic healthcare, dermatology, orthopedics, fertility treatment, gynecology, dentistry, hair-loss treatment, and ophthalmology. Its services include advertising and marketing, staffing and recruitment, booking and reservations, clinic development, procurement, IT solutions, and the licensing of medical technologies and trademarks. SBC also operates clinics in Singapore and Vietnam while expanding through strategic investments and alliances in the U.S. A key catalyst was its Q2 report on August 13, and shares have continued their momentum since then. Revenue growth reaccelerated, increasing 13% yr/yr to $49 mln, with CEO Yoshiyuki Aikawa saying the results marked a new phase of growth as SBC increasingly leverages the convergence of healthcare and AI. The company is using more than 26 years of accumulated data across AI-powered call centers, marketing, and site selection to improve clinic operations and support growth in locations, fees per clinic, and service offerings. As patient visits and treatment volumes increase, clinics can grow and generate higher service fees for SBC, creating a virtuous growth cycle. That reaccelerating growth is also translating into significant operating leverage, with adjusted EBITDA rising 32% yr/yr to $20 mln and margin expanding 600 bps to 41%. Looking ahead, SBC plans to deepen its multi-brand aesthetic dermatology strategy, expand its non-aesthetic business, and accelerate international growth through OrangeTwist in the U.S. and ASEAN.

Nordic American Tankers (NAT #20) is a crude oil tanker operator whose earnings are highly leveraged to changes in global tanker rates and utilization. The company is benefiting from a much stronger tanker market as geopolitical disruptions and longer shipping routes have tightened vessel availability and pushed freight rates higher, creating a favorable environment for NAT's fleet of Suezmax tankers. Management's latest commentary has pointed to exceptionally strong conditions for its vessels, while its Q2 report highlighted improving rates and vessel values, reinforcing the earnings and asset-value leverage to a stronger tanker cycle. The stock has responded sharply, climbing from roughly $3.50 in early January to above $8 now. We think the key attraction is NAT's relatively straightforward exposure to tanker rates: when rates rise, cash generation can increase rapidly, while higher vessel values can provide another source of shareholder value. NAT also has a long history of returning cash to shareholders through dividends, although the payout can fluctuate meaningfully with tanker-market conditions. The biggest risk is that the stock has already moved substantially higher and therefore has greater exposure to a reversal in freight rates; a normalization in geopolitical conditions, shorter trade routes or an increase in tanker supply could quickly pressure day rates and earnings. With NAT shares now trading near their recent highs, the stock appears increasingly tied to whether the current strength in the tanker market can persist rather than simply whether the underlying shipping industry remains healthy. On a final note, NAT is paying a hefty 9.9% dividend yield, but again if rates decline, that could be at risk.

Dorian LPG (LPG #22) is an owner and operator of very large gas carriers (VLGCs) that transport liquefied petroleum gas, primarily propane and butane, around the world. The company is benefiting from a powerful combination of strong US LPG exports, long-distance trade flows and tight VLGC availability, which has pushed shipping rates sharply higher and translated into outsized earnings growth. Dorian's Q1 (Jun) earnings report showed the leverage to this environment, with revenue more than doubling yr/yr to $187.9 mln. More recently, the outlook has strengthened further: Dorian estimated that 99% of its calendar days for Q2 (Sep) were fixed at rates above $88,000/day, providing unusually strong near-term earnings visibility. The stock has reflected that improvement, climbing more than 60% since late June, making LPG one of the more significant beneficiaries of the stronger VLGC market. Dorian recently ordered three dual-fuel Panamax VLGCs for $345 mln, with deliveries scheduled for 2030. The key risk is that LPG shipping remains a highly cyclical business: today's exceptional rates are supported by strong export demand and favorable trade economics, but a weaker US-to-Asia arbitrage, normalization of geopolitical disruptions or an expanding vessel orderbook could eventually pressure freight rates. With shares having already rallied substantially, the stock's future performance will increasingly depend on whether elevated VLGC rates can remain high.

SentinelOne (S #25) is a cybersecurity software company whose Singularity platform protects enterprise endpoints, cloud workloads, security data, identities, and AI applications through products including Singularity Endpoint, Cloud Security, AI SIEM, Purple AI, Prompt Security, and Wayfinder, serving large enterprises, governments, telecom operators, managed-security providers, and regulated organizations globally. Its growth strategy centers on displacing legacy endpoint vendors, consolidating multiple security tools onto one autonomous platform, moving upmarket through larger enterprise contracts, cross-selling faster-growing data, cloud, and AI-security products, and using SentinelOne Flex to simplify multiproduct adoption. In Q2, reported August 27, revenue increased 21% yr/yr to $292 mln, while ARR rose 22% to $1.218 bln and record second-quarter net new ARR of $56 mln grew 4%, extending net-new-ARR growth to five consecutive quarters. Customers generating at least $100,000 of ARR increased 13% yr/yr, slower than the prior quarter's 17% growth, but ARR per customer reached a record and dollar-based net retention among these large accounts improved yr/yr and sequentially for a third straight quarter, indicating that larger initial contracts and cross-selling are outweighing slower customer-count expansion. Non-GAAP operating margin reached a record 10%, expanding 820 bps yr/yr, while sales and marketing expense declined by more than 900 bps to 34% of revenue, demonstrating meaningful operating leverage as sales productivity, deal sizes, and renewal automation improve. Forward visibility also strengthened as RPO climbed 45% to $1.7 bln, supported by larger and longer-duration commitments, prompting SentinelOne to raise FY27 revenue guidance to $1.202-$1.207 bln and non-GAAP operating-income guidance to $124-$128 mln, although Q3 revenue guidance near consensus explains some investor caution after the stock's strong pre-report advance. The strongest growth catalysts are AI-security ARR from Prompt Security and Purple AI tripling yr/yr, SentinelOne Flex surpassing 10% of total ARR within one year, accelerating data and cloud-security adoption, sovereign and air-gapped deployment capabilities, and a large legacy-antivirus replacement opportunity, giving the company credible prospects for sustained growth and margin expansion if it continues converting its pipeline amid intense cybersecurity competition.

There is one deletion this week: EVER (weakening relative strength).

Emerging Growth Stocks is Briefing.com's proprietary quantitative system designed to uncover small, fast-growing companies that have the potential to become market leaders.

If you're new to this page, each Monday we publish an updated list of the top 25 small- and mid-cap growth stocks in the market. These companies are discovered and ranked using a quantitative screen that removes emotion and bias from the process, and which places a heavy emphasis on current and forward-looking indicators such as strong 6-month Relative Strength, fast-growing quarterly sales and EPS, expanding margins, etc. In addition, on the Live In Play page our analysts periodically publish fundamental and technical commentary under the "GROWX" ticker on EG components that have significant news, notable technical characteristics, or are just names that we find interesting.

We'd like to emphasize that the EG system was created in order to generate new growth stock ideas every week, regardless of market conditions. As such, readers should understand that Emerging Growth was specifically designed to be an idea generation system, and not a portfolio timing system.