On Tuesday, small cap security software stock Sourcefire, Inc (NASDAQ: FIRE) surged after Cisco Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced it would acquire the company in a deal worth $2.7 billion, pretty much leaving mid cap stocks Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE: PANW) and Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ: FTNT) left for investors or acquirers in the IT or cybersecurity space. Sourcefire itself is a top maker of next-generation intrusion prevention software, firewalls and malware protection for companies and government agencies. The deal puts Cisco even deeper into the key network security field with observers saying it could foreshadow other acquisitions in the space by other large cap IT players. Moreover, Christopher Young, senior vice president of Cisco's security group, was quoted in Investors Business Daily as saying:
Hot Life Sciences Stocks To Buy For 2015: Skyworks Solutions Inc.(SWKS)
Skyworks Solutions, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, offers analog and mixed signal semiconductors worldwide. The company provides power amplifiers and front-end solutions for cellular devices from entry level to multimedia platforms and smart phones. Its product portfolio consists of amplifiers, attenuators, detectors, diodes, directional couplers, front-end modules, hybrids, infrastructure RF subsystems, mixers/demodulators, phase shifters, PLLs/synthesizers/VCOs, power dividers/combiners, receivers, switches, and technical ceramics. Skyworks also offers MIS silicon chip capacitors, transceivers, and modulators. The company markets its products to automotive, broadband, cellular infrastructure, energy management, industrial, medical, military, and cellular handset applications. Skyworks sells its products primarily through its direct sales force, as well as through independent manufacturers? representatives and distribution partners. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By FinanceGuru]
Radio frequency (RF) chip manufacturer Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) has had some bad luck this year, because despite three straight quarters of solid results, the company's shares have appreciated only 10% while the NASDAQ is up 21%. In the past, the company's performance was directly linked to Apple's (AAPL) performance, as it derived 29% of its 2012 revenue from the smartphone maker. Thus, any negative news regarding the iPhone manufacturer was not well received by investors.
- [By jaggom]
Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) manufactures chips that enable wireless connectivity, therefore, the company has got huge market to be addressed in the future as the consumption of data is expected to multiply. Skyworks is performing brilliantly this year with shares appreciating more than 45%. The company has also gained smartly from its supplier relationships with Apple (AAPL) and Samsung. So, despite handsome gains in the current year so far, Skyworks still has room to gear up.
- [By John Kell]
Skyworks Solutions Inc.(SWKS) said its fiscal first-quarter earnings rose 42%, as the wireless-chip supplier continued to benefit from strong demand across its wide range of markets. Adjusted earnings and revenue exceeded expectations and the company’s fiscal second-quarter guidance beat analysts’ estimates. Shares climbed 10% to $31.53 premarket.
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Chevron Corporation(CVX)
Chevron Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in petroleum, chemicals, mining, power generation, and energy operations worldwide. It operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment involves in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas; processing, liquefaction, transportation, and regasification associated with liquefied natural gas; transportation of crude oil through pipelines; and transportation, storage, and marketing of natural gas, as well as holds interest in a gas-to-liquids project. The Downstream segment engages in the refining of crude oil into petroleum products; marketing of crude oil and refined products primarily under the Chevron, Texaco, and Caltex brand names; transportation of crude oil and refined products by pipeline, marine vessel, motor equipment, and rail car; and manufacture and marketing of commodity petrochemicals, plastics for industrial uses, and fuel and lubricant additives. It a lso produces and markets coal and molybdenum; and holds interests in 13 power assets with a total operating capacity of approximately 3,100 megawatts, as well as involves in cash management and debt financing activities, insurance operations, real estate activities, energy services, and alternative fuels and technology business. Chevron Corporation has a joint venture agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation. The company was formerly known as ChevronTexaco Corp. and changed its name to Chevron Corporation in May 2005. Chevron Corporation was founded in 1879 and is based in San Ramon, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jonas Elmerraji]
Surprisingly, one of the names that's correlating the highest with the S&P 500 right now is oil and gas supermajor Chevron (CVX). Just like the S&P, Chevron is trading in a very well-defined trend channel. The key difference is that the Chevron trade is further along; this stock is bouncing off of trendline support this week. That means it's time to be a buyer.
Commodities and materials stocks are seeing some buoyancy this week, but Chevron's price action is different -- it's been more sustained over the course of 2013. This stock's proximity to trendline support right now makes it the best-in-breed oil name in my view. As geopolitical risks propel oil prices, the real story at CVX is the fact that support is just a few points away. That makes Chevron a great setup from a risk management perspective.
Speaking of risk management, if you decide to jump into shares here, I'd recommend keeping a protective stopprotective stop just above the 200-day moving average.
- [By Dan Caplinger]
Chesapeake is still seeking to raise more cash through further asset sales this year. In February, Chesapeake sold a 50% interest in some of its Mississippi Lime acreage to China's Sinopec (NYSE: SHI ) . Then, earlier this month, Chesapeake said it's looking to sell further acreage in the Utica Shale play in the U.S. Midwest. Motley Fool contributor Tyler Crowe believes that Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) might be a natural buyer for Chesapeake's Utica property, given its recent commitment to focusing on unconventional domestic energy plays for further growth.
- [By Tyler Crowe]
Hawaiians have perpetually been saddled with high gas prices, and it doesn't look like things are going to get any better. Tesoro intends to shut down its facility in the island state, leaving Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) as the only game in town. That, combined with the high costs to ship crude there, has gas prices well north of $4.00 a gallon. As gasoline prices remain high in Hawaii, don't be surprised if more and more drivers make the switch to alternative fuels�
- [By Matt Thalman]
Another top stock today was Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) , which saw its shares rise 1.09%. One likely catalyst for the rise was the recent Morgan Stanley report that claimed Chevron would outperform its fellow Dow component and competitor ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM ) by 55% over the next few years. Morgan Stanley believes Chevron could experience higher production growth and realize better returns in the coming years. The firm also raised Chevron's price target to $135 per share, while reducing Exxon's to $85 per share. �
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Actuate Corp (BIRT)
Actuate Corporation (Actuate), incorporated in November 1993, provides software and services to develop and deploy custom Business Intelligence and information applications. Actuate offers ActuateOne to develop and deploy Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT)-based custom Business Intelligence and information applications focusing on browsers and mobile devices that deliver content hosted in cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and on premises deployments. Its products and services are used by its customers to develop and deploy applications across a range of business functions, including financial management, sales management, account management, and customer self-service. Xenos solutions, based on Xenos Enterprise Server, loads, transforms and presents high volumes of data and documents across multiple channels. Actuate�� BIRT Spreadsheet products are Excel-based. In February 2014, Actuate Corporation announced the acquisition of legodo ag.
ActuateOne-Business Intelligence, Analytics and Reporting
Actuate offers a range of BIRT-based Business Intelligence (BI), analytics and reporting features within the integrated ActuateOne platform, providing 64-bit, in-memory analytics, user configurable dashboards, ad-hoc query, interactive mobile and Web content, brochure-quality reporting, and spreadsheet analysis. ActuateOne provides a platform upon which Global 9000 and packaged application software vendors develop and deploy BI and information applications. Such applications retrieve business information from databases, as well as print streams and deliver it as dashboards, interactive Web pages, spreadsheets, mobile content and analytic cubes to customers, partners and employees worldwide.
Xenos Enterprise Server Framework
Xenos Enterprise Server (ES) is an application that captures, identifies, routes, stores and retrieves structured and unstructured documents and data. Xenos ES supports the processing, extraction, transformation, repurposi! ng and personalization of structured and unstructured data in both legacy and SOA environments. Xenos ES distributes documents across multiple channels, such as Web, mobile and tablet devices in addition to providing interactivity and document analytics through its integration with ActuateOne.
Performance Analytics
Actuate BIRT Performance Analytics provides interactive dashboards, analytics, and scorecards. With Web interface, users across the enterprise can monitor operations, identify and analyze performance issues and enact initiatives.
BIRT Spreadsheet
Actuate�� BIRT Spreadsheet products deliver Excel-like reporting, formatting and calculation functionality within Java applications. Actuate BIRT Spreadsheet products can also leverage all the Actuate deployment options-embedded in applications or deployed cloud or on-premise enterprise environments.
The Company competes with Information Builders, Qlik Tech, Pentaho, Jaspersoft, MicroStrategy, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Roberto Pedone]
Actuate (BIRT) provides software solutions and services to corporate and government customers worldwide. This stock closed up 1.7% to $4.54 in Tuesday's trading session.
Tuesday's Range: $4.43-$4.57
52-Week Range: $3.41-$8.23
Tuesday's Volume: 213,000
Three-Month Average Volume: 319,262From a technical perspective, BIRT trended modestly higher here back above its 50-day moving average of $4.51 with lighter-than-average volume. This move to the upside on Tuesday is starting to push shares of BIRT within range of triggering a major breakout trade. That trade will hit trigger if BIRT manages to take out some key overhead resistance levels at $4.60 to $4.75 and then above more resistance at $4.85 with high volume.
Traders should now look for long-biased trades in BIRT as long as it's trending above some key near-term support levels at $4.30 to $4.25 and then once it sustains a move or close above those breakout levels with volume that hits near or above 319,262 shares. If that breakout starts soon, then BIRT will set up to re-fill some of its previous gap-down-day zone from May that started near $6.
- [By John Udovich]
Yesterday, small cap business intelligence stock MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR) surged 18.44%�after reporting better-than-expected third quarter earnings ��meaning it might be a good idea to take a closer look at it�along with�small cap peers Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: BIRT) and Qlik Technologies Inc (NASDAQ: QLIK) to see what they might offer small cap investors. After all, everyone is being inundated with huge amounts of data from multiple sources, but its the following small cap stocks that provide software platforms to help customers try to make sense of it all:�
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Allot Communications Ltd.(ALLT)
Allot Communications Ltd. engages in developing, selling, and marketing Internet protocol service optimization and revenue generation solutions in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Its solutions are used to create policies to monitor network applications, enforce quality of service policies that guarantee mission-critical application performance, mitigate security risks, and leverage network infrastructure investments. The company offers traffic management systems, including Service Gateway platform for broadband service control and optimization based on DPI; and NetEnforcer traffic management system that inspects, monitors, and controls network traffic by application and by user. Its network management application suites comprise NetXplorer that provides service providers and enterprise customers a view of traffic on the network; and Subscriber Management Platform, a system that helps service providers build an intelligent service network d esigned to deliver the quality of experience. The company also offers ServiceProtector, which ensures service continuity, and guards network integrity against known and unknown threats, as well as enables surgical mitigation through immediate identification of denial of service attacks, zero day attacks, worms, zombie, and botnets. In addition, it provides MediaSwift that caches and accelerates popular Internet video. The company markets and sells its products to carriers, mobile operators, cable operators, educational institutions, governments, and enterprises, as well as wireless, wireline, and satellite Internet service providers. It sells it products through distributors, resellers, OEMs, value added resellers, and system integrators, as well as through direct sales. The company was formerly known as Ariadne Ltd. and changed its name to Allot Communications Ltd. in September 1997. Allot Communications Ltd. was founded in 1996 and is based in Hod-Hasharon, Israel.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Garrett Cook]
Telecommunications services shares gained around 0.25 percent in today’s trading. Top gainers in the sector included NQ Mobile (NYSE: NQ), Allot Communications (NASDAQ: ALLT), and SK Telecom Co (NYSE: SKM).
- [By Jon C. Ogg]
Allot Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: ALLT) was raised to Outperform with an $18 price target at Oppenheimer.
Baxter International Inc. (NYSE: BAX) was added to the Conviction Buy list with an $86 price target at Goldman Sachs.
- [By Evan Niu, CFA]
What: Shares of Allot Communications (NASDAQ: ALLT ) have popped today by as much as 10% after the company scored a big contract.
So what: Allot said it landed a $6.5 million order from a "Tier-1" mobile operator in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for Intelligent Steering and Value-Added Service licenses. The company added that the contract is a licensing expansion of an existing deployment. The customer will add functionalities to the current Allot Service Gateways deployment.
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc.(CBRL)
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the development and operation of the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurant and retail concept in the United States. Its restaurants provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The company?s gift shops offer various decorative and functional items, such as rocking chairs, holiday and seasonal gifts, apparel, toys, music CD?s, cookware, old-fashioned-looking ceramics, figurines, a book-on-audio sale-and-exchange program, and various other gift items, as well as candies, preserves, pies, cornbread mixes, coffee, syrups, pancake mixes, and other food items. As of November 22, 2011, it operated 608 company-owned locations in 42 states. The company was formerly known as CBRL Group, Inc. and changed its name to Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. in December 2008. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Blake Ellis]
Industries boasting the highest percentage of companies with perfect scores include law, banking and financial services, and retail and consumer products. Companies new to the 100% club include Nissan (NSANF), General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) and Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500). Other companies among the most improved this year (though they haven't achieved perfect scores yet) include Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), which saw its score jump from a 60 to 80 after it introduced same-sex benefits for employees, and Cracker Barrel (CBRL), which rose 10 points to a score of 45 after it launched a LGBT employee network and implemented a non-discrimination policy for LGBT employees.
- [By Rick Munarriz]
Finally, we have Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ: CBRL ) serving up a heaping hike. The chain of rustic restaurants serving up Southern vittles in eateries with adjacent gift shops may be a throwback, but it's also throwing back more money at its stakeholders. The restaurateur followed blowout quarterly results with a healthy 50% increase to its quarterly distributions. Investors will now be receiving $0.75 a share every three months.
- [By Jon Quast]
Stock buyback programs are fairly common, but they aren't always followed through on. For example, last year Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ: CBRL ) was authorized to buy back $100 million worth of its shares. When the year ended the company had only actually repurchased a relatively measly $14.9 million worth of its shares. Now that the $100 million program has expired, Cracker Barrel's board has authorized a new $50 million repurchase program.
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Home Loan Servicing Solutions Ltd (HLSS)
Home Loan Servicing Solutions, Ltd, incorporated on December 1, 2010, is a development-stage company. The Company is formed to acquire mortgage servicing assets, primarily subprime and Alt-A mortgage servicing rights and associated servicing advances. The Company will engage residential mortgage loan servicers to service the pools of mortgage loans underlying the mortgage servicing rights. The Company acquire and therefore do not intend to develop its own mortgage servicing platform.
The Company is focused to enter into the subservicing agreement to provide for the servicing of the initial mortgage servicing rights for an initial term of seven years. As of December 31, 2010, The Company had neither purchased nor contracted to purchase any mortgage servicing assets, including mortgage servicing rights and related servicing advances.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By David Sterman]
Although shares of Boulder Brands (Nasdaq: BDBD) are up more than 60% since then, Home Loan Servicing (Nasdaq: HLSS) has merely treaded water while Swift Energy has continued its downward ascent.
- [By Eric Volkman]
Home Loan Servicing Solutions (NASDAQ: HLSS ) is servicing its capital base with a new share offering that should total nearly $300 million. The company is floating 13 million shares of its stock in an underwritten public issue at a price of $23 per share. All told, the gross proceeds of the offering should amount to roughly $299 million.
Top 10 Mid Cap Companies To Invest In Right Now: Perfect World Co. Ltd.(PWRD)
Perfect World Co., Ltd., through its subsidiaries, engages in the research, development, operation, and licensing of online games primarily in the People?s Republic of China, the United States, and the Rest of Asia. It develops online games based on its game engines and game development platforms. The company?s 3D massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) include Perfect World, an adventure and fantasy game with traditional Chinese settings; Legend of Martial Arts, an adventure story of Chinese swordsmen set in an ancient kingdom; and Perfect World II, which is set in a similar content and graphic background as Perfect World. It also offers Zhu Xian that is based on martial arts focused adventure set in a fantasy world; Chi Bi, a war story developed based on ancient Chinese history known as the Three Kingdoms; Hot Dance Party, a 3D online casual game; Pocketpet Journey West, a 3D MMORPG based on the classical novel of Chinese literature, Journey to the West ; Battle of the Immortals, a mysterious adventure, which enables game players to travel between eastern and western cultures, and adventures in historic sites and turf wars; and Fantasy Zhu Xian, a 2D turn-based MMORPG based on the Internet fantasy novel Zhu Xian. It also involves in the production and distribution of films, as well as television advertising activities. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in Beijing, the People?s Republic of China.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Eric Volkman]
Perfect World's (NASDAQ: PWRD ) fortunes might just be improved with a freshly announced new title. The company has revealed that its latest game, Fortuna, will be available starting on July 18. Set in Europe during the Age of Discovery, the browser-based title is a strategy/war game in which players vie to develop modest settlements into global empires. Fortuna features the usual cutthroat conventions of the strategy and combat genres, including the ability to throw armies into battle, and to form opportunistic alliances with other players.
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