After a big decline of more than 200 points yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrials (DJINDICES: ^DJI ) has spent the morning trading in a narrow range as investors wait for tomorrow's news on the U.S. employment picture. Although today's data included a drop in weekly unemployment claims that would ordinarily have spurred some optimism about tomorrow's report, investors aren't sure whether to root for a strong jobs report that would point to a healthier economy or for a weak report that would increase the odds of further accommodation from the Federal Reserve. That uncertainty kept the stock market near breakeven, with the Dow down two points as of 10:55 a.m. EDT.
But some stocks are bouncing back for shareholders. Home Depot (NYSE: HD ) has risen 2.2% after getting hit hard in recent days. Rising interest rates have made their way into the mortgage loan market, and that has investors fearing a potential reversal in the substantial home-price gains that the housing market has seen over the past year. Yet reports yesterday that private-equity company Kelso might try to sell off its Custom Building Products home-furnishings and construction manufacturer might have reminded investors that Home Depot might benefit from a potential IPO of its former HD Supply unit, in which it still retains a 12.5% stake.
Hot Communications Equipment Companies To Watch For 2015: Compass Minerals Intl Inc(CMP)
Compass Minerals International, Inc., through its subsidiaries, produces and markets inorganic mineral products primarily in North America and the United Kingdom. The company operates in two segments, Salt and Specialty Fertilizer. The Salt segment produces salt and magnesium chloride for use in road deicing and dust control, food processing, water softeners, pool salt, and agricultural and industrial applications. This segment also purchases potassium chloride and sells as a finished product. The Specialty Fertilizer segment produces and markets sulphate of potash crop nutrients and industrial grade sulfate of potash for use in the production of specialty fertilizers for vegetables, fruits, potatoes, nuts, tobacco, and turf grass. The company also produces and markets consumer deicing and water conditioning products, ingredients used in consumer and commercial food preparation, and other mineral-based products for consumer, agricultural, and industrial applications. In ad dition, Compass Minerals provides records management services to businesses located in the U.K. The company operates rock salt mines in Goderich, Ontario, Canada; and Winsford, Chesire, the United Kingdom. It primarily serves producers of intermediate chemical products used in the production of vinyls and other chemicals, and pulp and paper, as well as water treatment and other industrial uses. The company markets its products through direct sales personnel, contract personnel, and a network of brokers or manufacturers? representatives. Compass Minerals International, Inc., formerly known as Salt Holdings Corporation, was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Roberto Pedone]
Compass Minerals (CMP) is a producer of minerals, including salt, sulfate of potash specialty fertilizer and magnesium chloride. This stock closed up 3.4% at $75.60 in Wednesday's trading session.
Wednesday's Volume: 913,000
Three-Month Average Volume: 212,481
Volume % Change: 315%From a technical perspective, CMP gapped higher here off its recent low of $64.24 with heavy upside volume. This stock recently gapped down sharply from around $90 to $64.24 with heavy downside volume. That move pushed shares of CMP into extremely oversold territory, since the stock's current relative strength index reading is 25.78. Oversold can always get more oversold, but it's also an area where a stock can experience a powerful bounce higher from. Shares of CMP are now starting to move within range of triggering a near-term breakout trade. That trade will hit if CMP manages to take out its gap down day high of $78.20 and then once it clears its 200-day moving average at $79.14 with high volume.
Traders should now look for long-biased trades in CMP as long as it's trending above Wednesday's low of $73.07 or $72.50 and then once it sustains a move or close above those breakout levels with volume that's near or above 212,481 shares. If that breakout hits soon, then CMP will set up to re-fill some of its previous gap down zone that started near $90.
- [By Brendan Mathews]
Compass Minerals (NYSE: CMP ) is a sleepy producer of a boring product: rock salt. But it has a strong competitive advantage. It owns the world's largest rock salt mine, which luckily is conveniently located near the major deicing markets of the Great Lakes region. This combination of a great mining resource and ideal location provide the company with a wide, crocodile-filled competitive moat.
- [By Alex Planes]
PotashCorp's difficulty sustaining its pricing power is underscored by recent reports from sulfate of potash (SOP) producer Compass Minerals (NYSE: CMP ) , which charged a hefty premium of almost $300 per ton against Potash Corp's prices for muriate of potash. Efforts to move away from SOP sales seem to be the right choice -- PotashCorp peer Intrepid Potash's�SOP sales fell by 37%, while the average price received has slumped nearly 14% in the last quarter. Even ore miner BHP Billiton�has recently jumped into the fertilizer industry with a $2.6 billion build-out of a potash mine in Canada, which is all but certain to produce further downward pressure on potash prices.
Best Building Product Stocks To Watch For 2014: K12 Inc (LRN)
K12 Inc. (K12), incorporated in December 1999, is a technology-based education company. K12 offers curriculum, software systems and educational services designed to facilitate individualized learning for students primarily in kindergarten through 12th grade, or K-12. The Company provides a continuum of technology-based educational products and solutions to districts, public schools, private schools, charter schools and families. Its products include Curriculum, Pre-K and K-8 Courses, Online School Platform-Learning Management System, High School Courses, Innovative Learning Applications, School Management Systems and PEAK12. Its managed public schools includes Full-time virtual schools and Blended schools, which includes Flex schools, Passport schools, Discovery schools and Other blended schools. Its institutional Business includes K12 curriculum, Aventa curriculum, A+ curriculum, Middlebury joint venture, Pre-kindergarten and Post-secondary. Its international and private pay business includes Managed private schools, The Keystone School, George Washington University Online HS, K12 International Academy, IS Berne, WEB and Independent course sales (Consumer). In April 2011, it acquired the operations of the International School of Berne (IS Berne).
Curriculum
K12 has the digital curriculum portfolio for the K-12 online education industry. The K12 curriculum consists of online lessons, offline instructional kits and materials, and lesson guides and other ancillaries. The Company offers a catalog of courses designed to teach concepts to students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as curriculum for use in post-secondary online programs. A single year-long K12 course generally consists of 120 to 180 instructional lessons. Each lesson is designed to last approximately 45 to 60 minutes, although students are able to work at their own pace. With the acquisition of the curriculum portfolios of KCDL (Aventa), AEC (A+) and Kaplan Virtual Education (KVE), as well as the MI! L joint venture, the Company has nearly 700 courses across kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school, including world languages. This combined portfolio contains over 100,000 hours of instructional content and over one million visual, audio and interactive instructional elements in the Company's asset repository.
The Company's K12 online lessons or curricula are accessed through a learning management platform, which the Company calls its Online School (OLS) for K- 8students and the eCollege platforms for high school students, as well as a number of other common industry platforms for students who access Aventa and A+ curricula. Many of the Company's courses utilize learning kits in conjunction with the online lessons to maximize the effectiveness of its learning systems. In addition to receiving access to the Company's online lessons through the Internet, each K-8 student receives a shipment of materials, including textbooks, art supplies, laboratory supplies (such as microscopes, scales, science specimens) and other reference materials which are referred to and incorporated in instruction throughout its curriculum. The Company's courses are generally paired with a lesson guide. Lesson guides work in coordination with the online lessons and include overview information for learning coaches, lesson objectives, lesson outlines and activities, answer keys to student exercises and suggestions for explaining difficult concepts to students.
Pre-K and K-8 Courses
From pre-kindergarten through 8th grade, the Company's courses are generally categorized into seven major subject areas: English and language arts, mathematics, science, history, art, music and world languages. The Company's curriculum includes all of the courses that students need to complete their core kindergarten through 8th grade education; a new pre-K offering students to core subjects through cross-curricular thematic units, building initial and fundamental relationships among concepts. Its learning! systems ! offer the flexibility for each student to take courses at different grade levels in a single academic year, providing flexibility for students to progress at their own level and pace within each subject area.
The first phase of the Company's K12 second generation elementary language arts program is designed to deliver interactivity and make instruction even more engaging while integrating rewards, interactive practice and a virtual world. The Company's Fundamentals of Geometry and Algebra course completes its K-8 math offering. These courses support students at various skill levels through targeted, timely remediation, embody the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and include media integration. In addition, the flexibility of the Company's learning systems allows the Company to tailor its curriculum to state specific requirements. For example, the Company has developed 62 courses specifically created for the public schools standards in 13 states. In addition to the ongoing evolution of the Company's K-5 Math+ program, the Company has also created over 80 custom Math+ sequences to serve specific state needs. The Company continues to migrate K12 K-8 courses from its legacy content management system (CMS) to its new CMS.
Online School Platform-Learning Management System
For the Company's K12 curriculum users in grades K-8, the Company provides a learning management system, its OLS platform. The OLS platform is an adaptive, intuitive, Web-based software platform that provides access to the Company's online lessons, its lesson planning and scheduling tools, as well as its progress tracking tool which serves a key role in assisting parents and teachers in managing each student's progress. The OLS is also the central structure through which students, parents, teachers and administrators interact using K-mail and Class Connect (the Company's integrated synchronous session scheduler). Students, parents and teachers can access the Company's online tools and lessons through t! he OLS fr! om anywhere with an Internet connection. The Company licenses a third-party learning management system for uses in its high school program.
High School Courses
The curriculum available to high school students is broader and varies from student to student. Students also are able to select from a range of electives. The Company has augmented its lab program for lab science courses with the creation of alternate kit-free science labs for the formerly kit-based high school science labs in order to provide a more flexible and robust lab program across its physical science, earth science, biology, chemistry and physics courses. The Company's overall lab program includes traditional kit-based labs based on either shipped-in or household materials, virtual labs, video-based labs, data-collection and data-manipulation labs, and field studies. Across all subject areas, the K12 core curriculum accounts for approximately 90% of the Company's high school course enrollments. It also offers curriculum marketed as its Aventa Learning by K12 product line. Aventa courses are written to national academic standards and each of Aventa's 22 AP courses has been reviewed and approved by The College Board. Aventa's online courses are developed by subject matter experts designed by multimedia teams and delivered by high school instructors. Aventa classes are primarily delivered over the Internet and use a variety of interactive elements to keep students engaged throughout.
The Company has A+ courseware, which is in use in over 5,000 public and private K-12 schools, charter schools, colleges, correctional institutions, centers of adult literacy, military education programs and after-school learning centers. The A+nyWhere Learning System provides an integrated offering of instructional software and assessment for reading, mathematics, language arts, science, writing, history, government, economics and geography for grade levels K-12. In addition, AEC provides assessment testing and instructi! onal cont! ent for the General Educational Development (GED) test. AEC products are designed to provide for LAN, WAN and Internet delivery options and support Windows and Macintosh platforms. Spanish-language versions are available for mathematics and language arts for grade levels 1-6.
The Company offers online world language courses and summer immersion language instruction programs through its MIL joint venture. In addition to offering powerspeaK12 language courses, this venture also offers innovative, online language programs for high school and middle school students based on the Middlebury College pedagogy. The new courses use instructional tools such as animation, music, videos and other elements that immerse students in new languages. Beginner French, Chinese and Spanish for high school students, as well as Chinese, French, Latin, Spanish and German courses for middle and high school students are available and additional courses are in development. The joint venture has expanded the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy (MMLA), a foreign language immersion summer program for middle and high school students, which includes a day academy for middle school students, as well as the Company's four-week residential academy with instruction in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish at multiple college campuses.
Innovative Learning Applications
The Company has created tools that allow for more rapid mobile and tablet curriculum or content deployment across platforms for deeper markets penetration. Seven additional mobile applications were delivered during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2012 (fiscal 2012), for a total of 15 applications available for download. These apps have been downloaded over 400,000 times. It offers applications for the iPhone, Android phones and Android tablet marketplaces, adapting many of its curriculum features for the mobile application space. An active educational games initiative is delivering new methods for engagement, practice and r! eview of ! K-12 concepts, including narrative/immersive styles, rewards, persistent data, complex algorithms. The Company has delivered a total of nine interactive games and an innovative review and practices portal called Noodleverse. Noodleverse includes over 1,700 activities and is designed for K-2 students in conjunction with a new language arts program.
The Company has delivered alternatives for its educational partners who desires materials-free curriculum. This includes converting over 59 existing materials-based high school Science labs into interactive virtual labs and video lab This laboratory is performed at a lab bench with all the materials and with the same procedures high school students would use in a physical chemistry laboratory. During fiscal 2012, the Company had converted 35 K12 textbooks used across 57 courses into an electronic format, including textbooks, reference guides, literature readers and lab manuals. This digital delivery ability enables the Company to offer options to the Company's customers through interactive online books that enhance the student's reading experience reinforce the student's learning approach and create a new method for delivering book and print materials. Each offline book is converted into an electronic book format with a custom user interface to be viewed through a standard Web browser or a commercially available electronic reader (Kindle and Nook).
The Company has learning management systems and can build courses that are adaptive, which enable individualized learning experiences as the course adapts at key points to student behavior and input. The Company's MARK12 reading remediation product captures individual students' successes and challenges as they practice phonemic awareness, alphabetic principles, accuracy and fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The program serves the individual student more exercises, practice and review in areas of difficulty. During fiscal 2012, the Company launched a pilot program for school year call! ed Nation! al Math Lab, designed as a controlled study with randomly selected treatment and control groups from a pool of students in grades 5-10 identified as significantly below grade level in math. The Company continues to explore opportunities to enhance student engagement through strategic use of relevant multimedia. Multimedia is specifically used as appropriate for the subject matter.
School Management Systems
School Management Systems (SAMS) is the Company's student information system. SAMS is integrated with the OLS and several other systems, including the Company's Online Enrollment System that allows parents to complete school enrollment forms online and its order management system that generates orders for learning kits and computers to be delivered to students. SAMS stores student-specific data and is used for a range of functions, including enrolling students in courses, assigning progress marks and grades, tracking student demographic data, and generating student transcripts. The Company has TotalView a range of online applications that provides administrators, teachers, parents and students a unified view of student progress, attendance, communications, and learning kit shipment tracking. TotalView includes a means of documenting student engagement in required classroom activities, identification of those students struggling with grade level state content standards, and previous year's performance on state tests. TotalView also includes K-mail, the Company's internal communications system. Through K-mail, administrators and teachers can communicate electronically with learning coaches and students. TotalView also includes an enrollment processing and tracking tool that allows it to closely monitor and manage the enrollment process for new students.
PEAK12
The Company has an online learning solution called PEAK12. This solution simplifies a district's management of online learning by consolidating multiple solutions on a single platform. It allow! s adminis! trators and teachers to manage enrollments, programs and performance tracking, alerts and reporting across multiple online solutions from a single solution. In addition, through the PEAK12 library, districts can search, build, provision and publish content or course modifications or new course solutions using various online learning assets. PEAK12 provides unparalleled capabilities for districts wanting to operate multiple solutions or catalogs from a single place and offers personalization features that can be managed at the district, school or teacher level.
The Company competes with DeVry, Inc., Pearson PLC, White Hat Management, LLC, National Network of Digital Schools Management Foundation Inc., Apex Learning Inc., Compass Learning, E2020 Inc., OdysseyWare, PLATO Learning, Inc., Rosetta Stone Inc., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson PLC., The Laurel Springs School, the National Connections Academy and Florida Virtual School.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Eric Volkman]
K12 (NYSE: LRN ) will soon have a new CFO. Harry Hawks has given notice that he will leave the position by the end of the company's current fiscal year. He plans to continue to assist the firm during the succession period and beyond, working as a consultant, in order to smooth the transition to a new CFO.
- [By Eric Volkman]
Less than two weeks after losing CFO Harry Hawks, K12 (NYSE: LRN ) has named a replacement. James Rhyu will take up that post, and also serve as executive vice president starting in early June.
- [By Lauren Pollock]
K12 Inc.(LRN) said its average student enrollments for the fiscal first quarter came in below the company’s expectations. Shares dropped, as the online-education company also offered revenue guidance for the fiscal year below Wall Street estimates.
Best Building Product Stocks To Watch For 2014: MagneGas Corp (MNGA)
MagneGas Corporation, incorporated on December 09, 2005, is an alternative energy company that creates and produces hydrogen based alternative fuel through the gasification of liquid waste. The Company has developed a process which transforms various types of liquid waste through a plasma arc machine. The result of the product is to carbonize the waste for normal disposal. A byproduct of this process is to produce an alternative to natural gas sold in the metalworking market. The Company produces gas bottled in cylinders for the purpose of distribution to the metalworking markets as an alternative to acetylene. In addition, the Company markets, for sale or licensure, its plasma arc technology. Through the course of the Company's business development, the Company has established a retail and wholesale platforms to sell its fuel for use in the metalworking and manufacturing industries. In August 2012, the Company purchased a 3.5 acre site in Tarpon Springs, FL.
The Company focuses on producing and selling fuels and equipment for the metalworking fuel market. The Company has distributors in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Michigan and Florida. The Company also has a retail operation in Florida selling fuel directly to end users. The Company has obtained approval from the Department of Transportation to deliver fuel in Florida and has several customers purchasing fuel directly. The Company has two products: the fuel called MagneGas and the machines that produce that gas known as Plasma Arc Flow refineries. The Company produces MagneGas for the metalworking market from a feedstock of virgin ethylene glycol (automotive anti-freeze) which is purchased in bulk from outside suppliers. The fuel is hydrogen based and can be used to replace natural gas. It is sold as a replacement for acetylene in the metalworking market. The Plasma Arc Flow technology can gasify many forms of liquid waste such as ethylene glycol, sewage and sludge. Plasma Arc Flow refineries are configured in various sizes ranging from 50kil! owatts (KW) to 500KW depending on the application.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By James E. Brumley]
You're welcome. Back on March 12th when yours truly penned some bullish thoughts on MagneGas Corporation (NASDAQ:MNGA), nobody cared, largely because nobody had heard of the company, and there was no particular reason anybody had to find MNGA. Now less than a full week later, this once-obscure name is all the rage; no less than 21 different market-centric websites have made mention of the stock's explosive growth over the past few days. MagneGas has been proverbially put on the map, with shares surging 90% (as of right now) since the first exploration last Wednesday. So, like I said, you're welcome.... if you got in on the 12th, or even more realistically, got in on the 14th when MNGA finally crossed above the ceiling at $0.94 I was talking about a little less than a week ago.
- [By James E. Brumley]
If the names Axxess Unlimited Inc. (OTCMKTS:AXXU) and MagneGas Corporation (NASDAQ:MNGA) ring a bell, it might be because yours truly posted some bullish thoughts on both names earlier this week. Although neither small cap stock had done everything they needed to do in order become a fully bullish trade at the time, both MNGA and AXXU have cleared those hurdles in the meantime. So, in case you forgot (or in case you missed the first look), an updated review of Axxess Unlimited and MagneGas is merited.
Best Building Product Stocks To Watch For 2014: Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.(CHKP)
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. develops, markets, and supports a range of software, and combined hardware and software products and services for information technology (IT) security applications worldwide. The company offers a range of network and gateway security solutions, data and endpoint security solutions, and management solutions. Its network security gateways enables its customers to implement their security policies on network traffic between internal networks and the Internet, as well as between internal networks and private networks that are shared with partners. The company?s endpoint security solutions provide various software blades that run on individual computers connected to the network, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, and other mobile devices. It also offers technical services consisting of technical customer support programs and plans, such as enterprise based support and collaborative enterprise support; certification and education al training on the checkpoint?s products; and professional services in implementing, upgrading, and optimizing checkpoint?s products, including design planning, security implementation, and project management services. In addition, the company offers ZoneAlarm solutions that protect consumers from hackers, spyware, and identity theft. It sells its products and services through a network of channel partners, including distributors, resellers, value-added resellers, system integrators, and managed services providers to enterprises, service providers, small and medium sized businesses, and consumers. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By James E. Brumley]
If you saw the alarming headlines circulating everywhere this morning, then there's a good chance you've already taken on a new position in Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CHKP). Both are solutions to the underscored problem, and truth be told, likely will benefit from ugly reality this morning's news is spreading. FTNT and CHKP may not be the best ways to play the news-based investing theme, however. The best long-term play is a solutions provider called Staffing 360 Solutions Inc. (OTCBB:STAF). While the company may not superficially sit in the same category as Fortinet or Check Point Software Technologies, fundamentally, it does, and may actually be better positioned for growth.
Best Building Product Stocks To Watch For 2014: Envision Healthcare Holdings Inc (EVHC)
Envision Healthcare Holdings, Inc., incorporated on February 28, 2011, is a provider of physician-led, outsourced medical services in the United States. The Company offers a range of clinically-based and coordinated care solutions across the patient continuum from medical transportation to hospital encounters to comprehensive care alternatives in various settings. The Company conduts its business primarily through two operating subsidiaries, EmCare Holdings, Inc. (EmCare) and American Medical Response, Inc. (AMR). The Company markets its services primarily under the EmCare and AMR brands. EmCareis a provider of integrated facility-based physician services, including emergency, anesthesiology, hospitalist/inpatient care, radiology, tele-radiology and surgery. EmCare also offers physician-led care management solutions outside the hospital. AMR is a provider and manager of community-based medical transportation services, including emergency (911), non-emergency, managed transportation, fixed-wing air ambulance and disaster response.
EmCare is a provider of integrated facility-based physician services to healthcare facilities, communities and payors in the United States. During the year ended December 31, 2012 (fiscal 2012), EmCare had approximately 10.5 million weighted patient encounters in 44 states and the District of Columbia. The Company segregates patient encounters into four categories:ED visits, hospitalist encounters, radiology reads and anesthesiology cases due to the differences in reimbursement rates for and associated costs of providing the various services. In fiscal 2012, AMR treated and transported approximately 2.8 million patients in 40 states and the District of Columbia. As of December 31, 2012, AMR had more than 3,700 contracts with communities, government agencies, healthcare providers and insurers to provide ambulance transport services. The Company segregates transports into two categories: ambulance transports (including emergency, as well as non-emergency, critical! care and other interfacility transports) and wheelchair transports to the differences in reimbursement rates for and associated costs of providing ambulance and wheelchair transports.
The Company competes with Team Health, Hospital Physician Partners, The Schumacher Group, Sheridan Healthcare, California Emergency Physicians, National Emergency Services Healthcare Group, IPC, Rural/Metro Corporation, Falck, Southwest Ambulance, Paramedics Plus and Acadian Ambulance.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By John Kell]
Envision Healthcare Holdings Inc.(EVHC) lowered its 2013 earnings outlook but also projected an adjusted profit for the recently started new year that topped expectations. The company said results improved in the latter part of the quarter, mostly the result of higher flu-related activity and seasonal volume. Shares rose 6.3% to $34.60 premarket.
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