• Why "fuel logistics" should be in every investor's vocabulary.
• Why investors love Aegean Marine Petroleum.
• Why the growth story for Aegean Marine is set to continue in 2015.

"Fuel logistics." The phrase is not immediately recognizable by most people, but once understood it is clear to see just how essential this business niche is to the general economy. The fuels that drive the world's economies - petrol, diesel, ethanol, biodiesel, etc. - do not magically reproduce themselves within the pumps of our service stations. They are the end product of a long, multi-step supply chain that begins when the crude oil is taken from the ground, and ends once it is put into your tank. The part of that process that deals with transportation and distribution is known as "fuel logistics."

Aegean Marine (NYSE:ANW) does fuel logistics. To be more precise, they deal in "marine fuel logistics," that is, the transportation and distribution process that brings refined fuels to refueling stations in ports and to ships at sea. Aegean buys the fuel from various refiners at a deep discount, loads it into its own fleet of massive barges, and transports the product to resellers, or brings it directly to ships at sea in need of refueling. Think of Aegean as a kind of floating gas station; or rather, 60 floating gas stations because that is how large its fleet is.

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Normally this kind of reselling is not the most profitable business. In fact, Aegean's profit margins (0.2%) make Wal-Mart's margins look positively enormous. But here's the thing: if you sell enough of any product, however slim your net profit, you can make good money. And for a company with a market cap of only $674 million, Aegean sells a lot of product. Last year the annual sales of the company came close to $7 billion. And this year looks even better.

One of the keys to Aegean's success is its recent strategic purchases. In 2007, the company bought a lubricant blending plant from Texaco and this has enabled the company to produce its own, very successful line under the brand-name ALFA. And, of course, Aegean runs the entire supply chain (call it "lubricant logistics") so they are able to keep all the profits.

In 2013, Aegean paid $30 million for a bunkering operation located in the Gulf of Mexico that had been owned by Hess. Based on a 3-year track record of sales, Aegean can count on adding nearly 2 million metric tons annually to its ledger. Early this year, the company will be doing the same thing in the Port of Los Angeles. They successfully bid $11 million at auction for a smaller facility, but this will now give them greater access to the Asian market as well as the U.S. West Coast.

Taking these new purchases into account, along with a new storage facility in the Fujirah Oil Terminal in the U.A.E. and expanding bunker operations in North Africa, Latin America and China, Aegean is expected to grow its net earnings at least 35% in 2015. This knocks its forward P/E multiple down to an anemic 12.8 times forward earnings.

Aegean also currently trades at the lowest price-to-sales multiple in the industry, a fact that has not passed by investors. They like the growth story and the cheap shares, which is why the stock is trading nearly 100% above the low that was set less than three months ago.

Analysts like the Aegean growth story too. Collectively the four institutions that follow the company hold a "strong buy" average for shares, and two of them recently revised their earnings estimates upward. With the L.A. port facility coming online this quarter, and with the Gulf of Mexico now fully adding to profits, along with the company's extremely low valuation ratios, we should continue to see a strong bid for shares of Aegean Marine Petroleum.

Disclosure: ANW was purchased for clients back on December 12, 2014, after it passed all my filters for "undervalued momentum growth."