Saturday, November 1, 2014

Top 5 Defensive Companies To Invest In Right Now

Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT), the largest chipmaking-equipment supplier, agreed to acquire Tokyo Electron Ltd. (8035) for $9.39 billion in stock in the largest deal for a Japanese company from outside the country in six years.

Gary Dickerson, who was promoted to chief executive officer of Applied Materials this month, will be CEO of the combined manufacturer, the companies said in a statement. Applied Materials shareholders will own 68 percent of the new entity.

Dickerson, who replaced Mike Splinter as CEO, is moving to consolidate the industry across continents amid slowing demand for equipment used to prepare silicon during the early stages of chip fabrication. Applied Materials in August forecast revenue that missed analysts��estimates for the second straight quarter amid a record slump in the personal-computer market and muted semiconductor demand.

��t�� a defensive strategy because R&D costs are going up and the number of customers is going down,��said Amir Anvarzadeh, a manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. (BGCP) in Singapore. ��his tells you there�� a problem in the industry.��

Hot Communications Equipment Stocks To Watch Right Now: WhiteWave Foods Co (WWAV)

WWF Operating Company, incorporated on March 14, 1988, is a consumer packaged food and beverage company. The Company manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells plant-based foods and beverages, coffee creamers and beverages, and dairy products throughout North America and Europe. The Company operates in two segments: North America and Europe. The North America segment offers products in the plant-based foods and beverages, coffee creamers and beverages, and dairy product categories throughout North America. Europe segment offers plant-based food and beverage products throughout Europe. The Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dean Foods Company (Dean Foods).

The Company�� brands distributed in North America include Silk plant-based foods and beverages, International Delight and LAND O LAKES coffee creamers and beverages, and Horizon Organic dairy products, while its European brands of plant-based foods and beverages include Alpro and Provamel. The Company sell its products to a variety of customers, including grocery stores, mass merchandisers, club stores, and convenience stores, as well as various away-from-home channels, including restaurants and foodservice outlets, across North America and Europe. The Company sells its products in North America and Europe primarily through its direct sales force and independent brokers. The Company utilizes five manufacturing plants, two distribution centers, and three co-packers across the United States. Additionally, it has four plants across Europe in the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, each supported by an integrated supply chain.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By John Maxfield]

    Meanwhile, the worst-performing stock on the index was Dean Foods (NYSE: DF  ) , which lost more than half of its value. This otherwise disturbing performance followed the company's spinoff of its organic-foods division, WhiteWave Foods (NYSE: WWAV  ) . As fellow Fool Rich Duprey covered here, each Dean Foods shareholder received 0.25544448 shares of WhiteWave class A stock and 0.36380189 shares of its class B stock for every share of Dean Foods.

Top 5 Defensive Companies To Invest In Right Now: First Financial Northwest Inc.(FFNW)

First Financial Northwest, Inc. operates as the holding company for First Savings Bank Northwest that provides community-based savings bank services in Washington. Its deposit products include noninterest bearing accounts, NOW accounts, money market deposit accounts, statement savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. The company?s loan products portfolio comprises one-to-four family residential loans, multifamily loans, commercial real estate loans, construction/land development loans, and business loans, as well as consumer loans, including home equity loans, personal lines of credit, second mortgage loans, and savings account loans. First Financial Northwest, Inc., through another subsidiary, First Financial Diversified, Inc., offers escrow services. The company primarily serves customers in the King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties of Washington through a full-service banking office in Renton, Washington. First Financial Northwest, Inc. was founded in 1923 and is based in Renton, Washington.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Jim Royal]

    The special situation
    For those of you following my Special Situations portfolio, Investors Bancorp is in a spot similar to First Financial Northwest (NASDAQ: FFNW  ) and TFS Financial (NASDAQ: TFSL  ) , both of which are featured substantially in the portfolio. While Investors Bancorp is still only a partially demutualized thrift (like TFS Financial today), it will soon become a fully public institution, like First Financial.

  • [By Jim Royal]

    One of my favorite reasons to reinvest in stocks I already own is when an uncertain, but favorable catalyst occurs, but the stock does little. So my Special Situations portfolio is adding $1,000 to each of the following three stocks: Cincinnati Bell (NYSE: CBB  ) , Bridgepoint Education (NYSE: BPI  ) , and First Financial Northwest (NASDAQ: FFNW  ) . Read on to see why.

Top 5 Defensive Companies To Invest In Right Now: Juniper Networks Inc (JNPR)

Juniper Networks, Inc. (Juniper Networks), incorporated on September 10, 1996, designs, develops, and sells products and services that together provide its customers with network infrastructure. It operates in two segments: Infrastructure and Service Layer Technologies (SLT). The Company�� Infrastructure segment primarily offers routing and switching products that are used to control and direct network traffic from the core, through the edge, aggregation, and the customer premise equipment level. Infrastructure products include its Internet protocol (IP) routing, carrier Ethernet routing portfolio, and Ethernet switching portfolio. In addition, the Infrastructure segment offers a complete wireless local area network (WLAN) solution. Its SLT segment offers solutions that meet a range of its customers' priorities, from protecting the users, applications and data on the network itself to providing network services across a distributed infrastructure. Effective September 13, 2013, Juniper Networks, Inc. acquired Contrail Networks Inc.

Brilliant is a supplier of packet-based, network synchronization equipment and monitoring solutions. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company introduced its network architecture and fabric technology for the data center, QFabric. It serves the high-performance networking requirements of global service providers, enterprises, and public sector organizations. The Company�� open cross-network software platform includes the Junos operating system (Junos OS), Junos Space network application platform, and Junos Pulse integrated network client. The Company offers a product portfolio that spans routing, switching, security, application access, and mobility device security.

Infrastructure Products

The Company�� T Series core routers are primarily designed for core IP infrastructures and are also being sold into the multi-service environment. Its PTX Series is a large capacity (8 and 16 tera-bits per second) MPLS-optimized packe! t transport switch for the core networks, of content service providers and Tier 1 service providers, with high throughout of packet traffic. The Company�� E Series products are a full featured platform designed for the network edge with support for carrier-class routing, broadband subscriber management services, and a set of IP services. The MX Series is a product family developed to address emerging Ethernet network architectures and services in service provider and enterprise networks. The Company�� EX Series family extends its product portfolio running its Junos OS to address the Ethernet switch market. Ethernet is a used technology, which is used to transport information in enterprise networks. Infrastructure Products also includes QFabric Products and WLAN product.

SLT Products

SLT Products include Services Gateway, Integrated Firewall, and VPN Solutions, Secure Access Appliances, Secure Access Appliances, IDP Series Appliances and Identity and Policy Control Solutions. The Company�� SRX Series of dynamic services gateways, running its Junos software, provides firewall/VPN and combines routing, switching, and security functionality. The series is designed to meet network and security requirements for data center consolidation, rapid managed services deployments, and aggregation of security services. Its firewall and VPN systems and appliances are designed to provide integrated firewall, VPN, and denial of service protection capabilities for both enterprise environments and service provider network infrastructures. These products range from its SSG product series, which combines LAN/WAN routing capabilities with threat management features, such as antivirus, anti-spam, and Web filtering technologies, to its ISG and NetScreen Series firewall and VPN systems, which are designed to deliver security in medium/large enterprises, carrier networks, and data centers.

The Company�� Junos Pulse, Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite, and SA Series SSL VPN appliances,! designed! for use in companies of all sizes, are used to provide secure access to corporate resources for remote and mobile users from any Web-enabled device, regardless of location. Its portfolio of identity and policy control solutions integrates subscriber privileges, application requirements, and business policies with the IP network infrastructure.

The Company competes with Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco), Alcatel-Lucent, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade), Extreme Networks, Inc., Hewlett Packard Company (HP), Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei), Check Point Software Technologies, F5 Networks, Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Inc., and Riverbed Technology, Inc.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

    Top Headline
    Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE: PG) reported a better-than-expected second-quarter net profit. Procter & Gamble's quarterly profit declined to $3.43 billion, or $1.18 per share, from a year-ago profit of $4.06 billion, or $1.39 per share. Its core earnings fell to $1.21 per share. Its sales came in at $22.28 billion versus $22.18 billion. However, analysts were projecting earnings of $1.20 per share on sales of $22.36 billion. Equities Trading UP
    Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) shot up 7.04 percent to $27.85 after the company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. Barclays upgraded the stock from Equalweight to Overweight and lifted the price target from $29.00 to $34.00. Shares of Ariad Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARIA) were up as well, gaining a staggering 21.68 percent to $9.14 as rumours of a takeover from a major pharma name swirled around the street. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was also up, gaining 2.66 percent to $37.01 after the company reported stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results. Credit Suisse raised the price target on the stock from $40.00 to $42.50.

  • [By Evan Niu, CFA]

    What: Shares of Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR  ) have dropped by as much as 10% today after the company reported preliminary earnings with worse-than-expected guidance.

  • [By Jonas Elmerraji]

     

    2014 has been a rough year for shareholders in Juniper Networks (JNPR). Since shares peaked in January, this stock has dropped to the tune of 17%. The bad news is that this stock isn't showing any signs of ending that selloff. The good news is that you don't have to be an expert technical trader to figure out what's going on here.

    The price action in Juniper Networks is about as simple as it gets. JNPR has been bouncing its way lower in a textbook downtrending channel since last September, swatted lower on each successive test of trend line resistance. That pair of parallel trend lines on Juniper's chart defined the high-probability range for shares of JNPR to trade within. And since those lines are pointing down and to the right, it makes sense to stay out of this stock in August. It's really just as simple as that.

    I'd recommend staying away from the long-side of JNPR until shares can press up through their 50-day moving average, a level that's been a good proxy for trend line resistance on the way down. Until that happens, the downtrend is intact.

    Read More: 5 Hated Earnings Stocks You Should Love

  • [By Suravi Thacker]

    But Cisco faces stiff competition from other players such as Juniper Networks (JNPR) which has been performing much better. In fact, Juniper Networks reported a 10% surge in its top line in the most recent quarter, clocking in at $1.17 billion. Also, its earnings jumped 22% to $0.22 per share, over the previous year�� quarter.

Top 5 Defensive Companies To Invest In Right Now: Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. (BIN)

Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. operates as a vertically integrated non-hazardous solid waste management company in North America. It operates through three segments: Canada, the U.S. south, and the U.S. northeast. The company provides waste collection, transfer, recycling, and disposal services to commercial, industrial, municipal, and residential customers in 13 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and 6 Canadian provinces. It also owns and operates a power generating plant fuelled by landfill gas; and generates and sells methane gas. The company was formerly known as IESI-BFC Ltd. and changed its name to Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. in May 2011. Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. was founded in 2001 and is based in Vaughan, Canada.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Sean Williams]

    Keep in mind, though, this is a sectorwide problem, not just one affecting Waste Management. Canada's Progressive Waste Solutions (NYSE: BIN  ) delivered an 11% increase in first-quarter revenue but succumbed to a decrease of 0.5% in recycling revenue because of lower realized metal prices. �

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