Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Taser International Inc., the world’s biggest stun-gun maker, jumped the most in seven years in U.S. trading on the announcement of U.K. funding for a record purchase of 10,000 weapons.

The order would be the company’s biggest ever, Steven Dyer, a Minneapolis-based analyst for Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, said today in a telephone interview.

“It would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million and we have them doing $89.4 million next year, so it would be obviously pretty significant,” Dyer said. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company doesn’t give sales and earnings projections.

Taser needs international revenue “to pick up the slack for a little bit of slow growth in the U.S. right now,” said Dyer, who rates the shares “accumulate” and doesn’t own any. Overseas sales grew to 16 percent in the quarter ended Sept. 30 from 15 percent a year earlier as shrinking state and local spending squeezed U.S. police budgets.

Taser’s weapons, tested for a year in 10 U.K. police districts, will be allocated to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said today in an e-mailed statement.

“I am proud that we have one of the few police services around the world that do not regularly carry firearms and I want to keep it that way,” Smith said in the statement. “I want to give the police the tools they tell me they need to confront dangerous people.”

Biggest Gain Since 2001

Taser climbed 99 cents, or 37 percent, to $3.68 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading for the biggest gain since its initial public offering in June 2001. The stock has lost 74 percent of its market value this year.

“We are encouraged to see the U.K.’s intent to expand the availability of our life-saving technology,” spokesman Steve Tuttle said in an e-mail. “We look forward to supporting the U.K. in the rollout.”

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, with 3,027 devices, is currently Taser’s largest customer, followed by Phoenix with 2,953 and Houston at 2,700, Tuttle said.

Separately Taser said today that it will fill a Los Angeles Police Department order for 1,275 weapons in the fourth quarter.

“In upcoming fiscal years, the goal is to purchase additional” weapons “so that every patrol officer has an individually assigned device,” Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Jarzemsky in New York at mjarzemsky@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 24, 2008 16:27 EST