Better Than Expected Results For Q2
Alcoa delivered better results than the Street expected for the second quarter, as the company managed to eke out a bit of positive performance in the face of ongoing aluminum price erosion.
Revenue fell 2% for the quarter, with third-party alumina sales up 10%, third-party primary aluminum sales down 10%, rolled product sales down 2%, and engineered product sales up 3%. Gross margin improved more than two points from the year-ago period, but fell more than a point sequentially. Operating income was up 65% from last year, but down almost one-quarter from the first quarter, and EBITDA was likewise stronger on a year-over-year basis (up 19%) and weaker sequentially (down 11%).
Top Income Companies To Invest In 2014: Air Lease Corporation (AL)
Air Lease Corporation engages in the purchase and leasing of commercial aircraft to airlines worldwide. The company also provides fleet management and remarketing services, including leasing, re-leasing, lease management, and sales services to investors and/or owners of aircraft portfolios. As of December 31, 2011, it had a fleet of 102 aircraft comprising 81 single-aisle jet aircraft, 19 twin-aisle widebody aircraft, and 2 turboprop aircraft. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Los Angeles, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Rich Smith]
If you ask devoted Boeing (NYSE: BA ) shareholders why they own it, they'll tell you there are about 787 good reasons to buy Boeing stock today -- and maybe more. Yesterday, Boeing announced that it's landed 102 orders for its most advanced Dreamliner airplane yet, the 787-10, with United Airlines (NYSE: UAL ) signing up to buy 20 of the new birds, and Air Lease (NYSE: AL ) and Singapore Airlines tying in the race to buy the most -- 30 Dreamliner-10s apiece.
- [By Holly LaFon] ease Corporation is an aircraft leasing company principally engaged in purchasing commercial aircraft and leasing to airlines around the world. Air Lease has a market cap of $2.49 billion; its shares were traded at around $25.22.
Air Lease Corporation went public in April 2011 and traded as high as $29.94 per share, but soon fell to as low as $17.24 per share in the fourth quarter. Stahl was able to buy 2,242,516 shares at an average price of $22 in the fourth quarter.
Stahl gave a lengthy analysis of Air Lease in his fourth quarter letter:
Air Lease is the second coming of Steven Udvar-Hazy. In 1973, Mr. Udvar-Hazy co-founded what became International Lease Finance Corp. (��LFC��, and in doing so established a new industry: leasing commercial aircraft to airline companies. He was successful both in concept and execution. ILFC, which is the world�� largest aircraft lessor, was sold to American International Group (��IG�� in 1990 for $1.3 billion. Mr. Udvar-Hazy remained CEO of ILFC until 2009, and retired from AIG in February 2010. By April 2011, he had engineered the IPO of a new aircraft lessor, Air Lease, bringing with him ILFC�� senior officers, who had worked for him there since 2002.
The basis for this new venture appears to be the reluctance of AIG to invest in the business. The two largest aircraft lessors are owned by diversified financial companies, the 2nd being GE Capital, which, like other major finance companies, is shrinking its balance sheets. Yet, this is occurring at what seems to be an opportune moment to allocate additional capital to the business:
��On a secular basis, airlines continue to increase their use of leasing. The proportion of aircraft fleets leased was about 0% in 1973, about 20% 25 years later in 1998, and 35% 12 years later in 2010. Leasing permits airlines to deploy their insufficient capital elsewhere, to more readily expand and diversify their fleets, and is a particularly helpful me
Top Income Companies To Invest In 2014: Mastercard Incorporated(MA)
MasterCard Incorporated, together with its subsidiaries, provides transaction processing and related services to customers principally in support of their credit, deposit access, electronic cash and automated teller machine payment card programs, and travelers? cheque programs. Its payment solutions include payment programs, marketing, product development, technology, processing, and consulting and information services. The company provides transaction processing services comprising transaction switching, which include authorization, clearing, and settlement; connectivity services, such as network access, equipment, and the transmission of authorization and settlement messages; and other payment-related services consisting of products used to prevent or detect fraudulent transactions, cardholder services, professional consulting and research services, compliance and penalty, account and transaction enhancement services, holograms, and publication services. MasterCard Incor porated manages and licenses payment card brands, including MasterCard, MasterCard Electronic, Maestro, and Cirrus. The company?s payment programs, which are facilitated through its brands, include consumer credit, debit and prepaid programs, commercial payment solutions, and contactless payment solutions. It serves approximately 22,000 financial institutions. The company was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Steve Heller]
It seems that once you've grown large enough to disrupt business as usual for MasterCard (NYSE: MA ) and Visa (NYSE: V ) , you run the risk of getting muscled. MasterCard recently announced plans to raise prices on intermediated payment processors (read: digital wallets) that chose to withhold valuable transaction details from MasterCard. In other words, this measure takes direct aim at eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY ) PayPal and other digital wallets such as Google Wallet that do not share transaction details with the payment processor.
- [By Paul Ausick]
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) slipped 2.41% for the day, likely on the coattails of an earnings miss by rival MasterCard In. (NYSE: MA). Consumer finance stocks were near the top of today�� sector losers. Shares closed at $215.56 in a 52-week range of $154.14 to $235.50. Volume was about 70% above the daily average of around 3 million shares.
- [By Jonas Elmerraji]
By any account, 2013 has been a stellar year for shares of payment network MasterCard (MA) -- the $99 billion firm has seen its share price rally more than 68% in the last 12 months. Investors have some big tailwinds to thank for all that upside; and those macro factors aren't showing any signs of dying down as we head into another year.
MasterCard is the second-biggest payment network in the world, with nearly a third of the world's credit and debit cards bearing its logo. Like larger competitor Visa (V), MasterCard is a payment network only - that means that it doesn't carry credit risk on its balance sheet from lending cash to consumers and businesses. MA only facilitates the transaction for a fee, which means that the firm's revenues are tied to global spending volumes, not debt levels. Card networks tend to have a positive feedback loop -- consumers choose MasterCard, for example, because it's accepted nearly universally, and merchants accept MasterCard because of the large numbers of consumers who carry the card. That makes it even more challenging for new competitors to break into the field.
The big macro trend boosting MasterCard is the worldwide shift from cash to electronic payments. Despite the popularity of electronic card payments in countries like the U.S., the vast majority of worldwide transactions are still settled in cash. Because of the extra convenience and security of payment cards, that tide is turning - and MA and its competitors all stand to benefit from the growth.
MasterCard's momentum still looks strong heading into 2014, and that makes this Rocket Stock worth a closer look as we head into a new year.
- [By Jae Jun]
Having missed out on Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA), stumbling upon FleetCor is a pleasant surprise. FleetCor Technologies is a company that provides fuel cards and payment products used by employees. The company also has lodging cards, but since the overall concept is the same, I will focus most of the discussion on fuel cards.
Top Cheapest Stocks To Buy Right Now: Hauppauge Digital Inc.(HAUP)
Hauppauge Digital Inc. engages in the design, development, manufacture, and marketing of analog and digital TV tuner products for the personal computer (PC) market in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. It offers video recorder products, such as USB-Live2, a standard definition video recorder used to record video tapes and other types of video into a PC; HD PVR, a high-definition video recorder for making real-time H.264 compressed video recordings at resolutions up to 1080i, and to record old home video tapes into an AVCHD format; and Colossus to record high definition video from a cable TV or satellite set top box, or an Xbox 360 or Sony playstation 3 game console. The company also provides TV receivers, including Broadway that connects to a TV signal and then transmits that TV signal through a Wi-Fi network or the Internet; analog TV tuners to enable a PC user to watch analog cable TV in a resizable window; digital TV receivers and hybrid analog/digital TV receivers, which allow a PC user to watch digital television in a resizable window on a PC or laptop screen; and PCTV TV tuner products that allow users to view television programming on their computers. In addition, it offers non-TV tuner products comprising WinTV application, a PC-based TV watching, pause, and recoding application; WinTV Extend software product, a PC-based Internet video server that streams live TV or other video content to remote devices; Impact video capture board for PC-based video conferencing and video capture in industrial applications; MediaMVP-HD, a Linux-based digital media device that links TV sets and PCs; and MediaMVP to watch and listen to PC-based videos, music, and pictures on a TV set through a home network, as well as provides an on-TV-screen display of media directory listings. The company sells its products through retailers, PC manufacturers, and distributors. Hauppauge Digital Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Hauppauge, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Monica Gerson]
Hauppauge Digital (NASDAQ: HAUP) shares fell 8.70% to touch a new 52-week low of $0.42. Hauppauge Digital shares have dropped 61.02% over the past 52 weeks, while the S&P 500 index has gained 18.17% in the same period.
Top Income Companies To Invest In 2014: Alliance Fiber Optic Products Inc.(AFOP)
Alliance Fiber Optic Products, Inc. engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of a range of fiber optic components and integrated modules incorporating these components to communications equipment manufacturers and service providers in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company offers interconnect devices that are used to connect optical fibers and components; couplers and splitters that are used to divide and combine optical power; and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) devices that separate and combine multiple specific wavelengths. Its connectivity products include connectivity modules; optical connectors, adapters, and cable assemblies; fused and planar fiber optical splitters and couplers; optical tap couplers and ultra low polarization dependent loss tap couplers; amplifier wave division multiplexing (WDM) couplers; optical fixed attenuators; and fused fiber WDM couplers. The company?s optical passive products comprise filter WDMs, amplifier fil ter WDMs, DWDMs, coarse WDMs, compact coarse WDMs, add/drop DWDM filters, optical isolators, optical bypass switches, and automatic variable optical attenuators. Its products are deployed in long-haul networks that connect cities; metropolitan networks that connect areas within cities; last mile access networks that connect to individual businesses and homes; and enterprise networks within businesses. The company sells its products to communications equipment manufacturers who incorporate its products into their systems and sell them to network service providers, as well as to other component manufacturers for resale or inclusion in their products. Alliance Fiber Optic Products, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Michael A. Robinson]
Enter Alliance Fiber Optic Products Inc. (Nasdaq: AFOP). Basically, Alliance helps make fiber-optic technology possible for homes and businesses.
- [By Alex Planes]
What: Shares of Alliance Fiber Optic Products (NASDAQ: AFOP ) have surged nearly 13% today after the company bested the Street's earnings consensus and offered strong guidance for the upcoming quarter.
- [By Michael A. Robinson]
During the same five years, a small-cap play on high-speed digital networks did almost as well. Alliance Fiber Optic Products Inc. (Nasdaq: AFOP) has rallied nearly 785%, turning $25,000 into $221,250.
Top Income Companies To Invest In 2014: Watsco Inc.(WSO)
Watsco, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the distribution of air conditioning, heating, and refrigeration equipment in the United States. It distributes residential central air conditioners; gas, electric, and oil furnaces; commercial air conditioning and heating equipment and systems; and other specialized equipments. The company also distributes various parts, including replacement compressors, evaporator coils, motors, and other component parts; and supplies comprising thermostats, insulation material, refrigerants, ductwork, grills, registers, sheet metal, tools, copper tubing, concrete pads, tape, adhesives, and other ancillary supplies. It serves approximately 50,000 contractors and dealers that service the replacement and new construction markets. The company also exports its products to Latin America and the Caribbean. Watsco, Inc. was founded in 1945 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Greg Williamson]
A successful HVAC distribution company with great growth potential
An excellent way to profit from these tailwinds is by investing in Watsco (NYSE: WSO ) (NYSE: WSO ) (NYSE: WSO ) . Watsco is a leading distributor of HVAC equipment, with more than 570 locations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Watsco also exports products to Latin America and the Caribbean. - [By Michael Flannelly]
Watsco Inc (WSO), a distributor of air conditioning, heating, and refrigeration equipment, announced early on Wednesday that it is raising its quarterly dividend payout by 60%.
The company will now pay a quarterly dividend of 40 cents per share, up from the previous payout of 25 cents per share. This dividend will be paid on October 31 to shareholders of record on October 15, with an ex-dividend date of October 10.
Albert H. Nahmad, Watsco’s Chairman & Chief Executive Officer stated, “Our philosophy of sharing cash flow through dividends continues. As we have stated many times in the past, our goal over the long-term is to pay increasing dividends while maintaining a conservative balance sheet with capacity to make investments in our business and build our network. We will consider future increases in light of such investment opportunities, cash flow, general economic conditions and our overall financial condition.��/p>
Watsco shares were inactive during pre-market trading on Wednesday. The stock is up 25.49% year-to-date.
Top Income Companies To Invest In 2014: Apollo Global Management LLC(APO)
Apollo Global Management, LLC is a publicly owned investment manager. The firm primarily provides its services to pension and endowment funds, institutional investors, individual investors, pooled investment vehicles, and corporations. It manages client focused portfolios, hedge funds, real estate funds, and private equity funds for its clients. The firm invests in the fixed income and alternative investment markets across the globe. Its alternative investments include investment in private equity and real estate markets. The firm's private equity investments include traditional buyouts, distressed buyouts and debt investments, corporate partner buyouts, distressed asset, turnaround, corporate restructuring, special situation, acquisition, and industry consolidation transactions. Its fixed income investments include distressed debt, senior bank loans, and value oriented fixed income securities. The firm seeks to invest in chemicals; commodities; consumer and retail; oil an d gas, metals, mining, agriculture, commodities, distribution and transportation; financial and business services; manufacturing and industrial; media distribution, cable, entertainment, and leisure; energy, packaging and materials; and satellite and wireless. It seeks to invest in companies based in across North America with a focus on United States, and Europe. The firm employs a combination of contrarian, value, and distressed strategies to make its investments. It conducts an in-house research to create its investment portfolio. The firm seeks to acquire minority positions in its portfolio companies. Apollo Global Management, LLC was founded in 1990 and is headquartered in New York, New York with nine additional offices in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Louis Navellier]
Apollo Global Management (APO) is one of the largest private equity and alternative investment firms in the world, and the outstanding results are driving solid earnings growth. Profits are up more than 100% over the past year and the stock has been ranked ����since May. The shares have a P/E ratio of just 7.85 and are a at the current price.
- [By Eric Volkman]
A sizable block of Realogy Holdings (NYSE: RLGY ) shares is about to change hands in a secondary offering. The company announced that "certain funds associated with" Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO ) are unloading their collective stake of just over 25.1 million shares. The transaction's underwriters are Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase's J.P. Morgan Securities, which will buy all of the shares then turn around and sell them to the public.�
- [By Will Ashworth]
As for the other stocks in the portfolio, you can’t ignore the performance of both Apollo (APO) and ITT Corp. (ITT).
It’s been a busy year for private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which got the Twinkie back on grocery store shelves in July. Carried interest income more than doubled in the first six months of the year to $1.4 billion.
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