A total of $4 billion will resolve allegations that the nation's largest bank violated federal and state securities laws in connection with $33.8 billion in mortgages sold to the government-sponsored agencies by JPMorgan and its Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual units.
The New York-based bank separately agreed to pay approximately $1.1 billion to Fannie and Freddie to fund repurchase claims on single-family mortgages bought by the two agencies.
"This is a significant step as the government and JP Morgan Chase move to address outstanding mortgage-related issues," said FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco in a statement announcing the deals. He added that the combined settlements would "have a beneficial impact for taxpayers and the housing finance market."
Top 10 Defense Stocks To Own Right Now: Realty Income Corporation(O)
Realty Income Corporation engages in the acquisition and ownership of commercial retail real estate properties in the United States. The company leases its retail properties primarily to regional and national retail chain store operators. As of December 31, 2006, it owned 1,955 retail properties located in 48 states, covering approximately 16.7 million square feet of leasable space. The company also held a portfolio of 60 properties through its wholly owned subsidiary, Crest Net Lease, Inc. (Crest), as of the above date. Realty Income Corporation has elected to be treated as a real estate investment trust (REIT) under the Internal Revenue Code. As a REIT, it would not be subject to federal income taxes provided it distributes at least 90% of its taxable income to its shareholders. The company was founded in 1969 and is based in Escondido, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Charles Sizemore]
The declines in the broader stock market averages have been pretty mild — the S&P 500 is down about a percent since November 29, and the Dow is down about a percent and a half — but several ��ond-like��stocks are down sharply. Realty Income (O), one of my favorite long-term dividend payers, is down more than 4% over the same period and is now hitting new 52-week lows.
- [By Bob Ciura]
However, despite headwinds in the past year due to rising rates, high-quality REITs like�HCP� (NYSE: HCP ) ,�Health Care REIT� (NYSE: HCN ) , and�Realty Income� (NYSE: O ) �exhibit long-term visions for their business that should appeal greatly to Foolish investors.
- [By Marc Bastow]
Free-standing retail outlet center real estate investment trust Realty Income (O) raised its monthly dividend 0.17% to 18.25 cents per share, payable April 15 to shareholders of record as of April 1. The increase marks the 75th rise in Realty Income’s dividend. At more than 5%, O is the highest-yielding stock of this week’s list of dividend stocks.
O Dividend Yield: 5.16% - [By Brian Louis]
American Realty�� acquisitions will make it the 14th-largest U.S. REIT by market value, which should boost liquidity and price support for investors and increase research coverage by analysts, according to the company�� investor presentation. Realty Income�� (O) price relative to 2014 estimated funds from operations, a REIT measure of cash flow, is about 16 times, according to the average of 12 analyst FFO projections, while American Realty�� is 13 times, based on four analysts.
Top Diversified Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: HealthStream Inc (HSTM)
HealthStream, Inc. (HealthStream), incorporated in September 27, 1990, provides Internet-based learning and research solutions for healthcare organizations. The Company�� learning products are used by healthcare organizations to meet a range of their training, certification, and development needs, while its research products provide the customers information about patients��experiences, workforce engagement, physician relations, and community perceptions of their services. HealthStream�� products and services are organized into two segments: HealthStream Learning and HealthStream Research. HealthStream�� customers include healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and other participants in the healthcare industry. Its customer base across both learning and research business units includes over 3,000 healthcare organizations (predominately acute-care facilities) throughout all 50 states of the United States. In March 2014, the Company acquired Health Care Compliance Strategies, Inc., a Jericho, New York-based company focused on interactive and engaging online compliance training for healthcare organizations.
The Company�� core learning product is the HealthStream Learning Center (HLC), its learning platform provided through the Internet through software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. As of December 31, 2012, HealthStream had approximately 3.1 million contracted, primarily hospital-based subscribers, to the HLC platform. It delivers educational and training courseware to its customers through the HLC platform. Its research products and service offerings include satisfaction surveys, data analyses of survey results, and other research-based measurement tools focused on patients, physicians, employees, and members of the community. The Company�� core research product is the Patient Insights survey.
HealthStream Learning & Talent Management
Within HealthStream Learning & Talent Management, the Company brings training, assessment and! education content together with administrative and management tools through its HLC , HCC, and HPC. It also offers a more streamlined version of the HLC, HealthStream Express, along with HealthStream Connect, a content delivery platform that is designed for the singular purpose of allowing access to its content libraries. These content libraries allow HLC platform customers to subscribe to an array of additional courseware. Additionally, through its Hospital Direct capability in the HLC, medical device companies can offer online training support for their products and sponsor continuing education directly to healthcare workers.
The Company�� learning management system supports healthcare administrators in configuring training to meet the needs of various groups of employees, modifying training materials, and documenting training completion. It offer training, implementation, and account management services to facilitate adoption of its platform. Offered via a SaaS model, its Internet-based platform and its courseware are hosted in a central data center that allows authorized subscribers Internet access to its services.
In addition to the HLC, the Company offers an array of platform extensions, each serving a function for hospitals and health systems. The Authoring Center is a platform extension that provides healthcare organizations the capability to create Internet-based courses by moving their existing course material online or self-authoring new material and electively sharing these materials with its other customers through a courseware exchange. It also offers Authoring Pro, an upgraded product, which includes a licensed image library, as an additional subscription to this product. The HealthStream Competency Center (HCC) is its SaaS-based platform extension for competency management solution for healthcare organizations, provides customers tools to assess competency and appraise performance.
SimCenter, the Company�� platform extension offer products and ! services ! focused on accelerating the global adoption of simulation-based learning by healthcare providers with a focus on improving clinical competencies and patient outcomes. The new venture offers healthcare organizations and medical and nursing schools worldwide a range of integrated SaaS applications that accelerate development and distribution of simulation content; enable enterprise-wide management of simulation centers, simulators, and programs, and support assessment of the effectiveness of simulation training as part of complete curricula.
The HealthStream Improvement Center is a SaaS-based platform extension related to its research offering. This extension is an online system for hospital leaders to optimize and accelerate the execution of improvement plans, including those based on results from its patient, employee, physician, and community surveys. The Improvement Center, a licensed technology, is one of a number of solutions from HealthStream Research that include a line of survey products, national benchmarks, HCAHPS Improvement Library, consulting services, and other support tools.
HealthStream Research
HealthStream Research complements HealthStream Learning�� product and service offerings by providing hospital-based customers with Patient Insights, Employee Insights, Physician Insights, and Community Insights surveys, data analyses of survey results, and other research-based measurement tools. Its services are designed to provide thorough analyses that provide insightful recommendations for change; benchmarking capability using its databases, and consulting services to identify solutions for its customers based on their survey results. Its survey and research solutions focus on providing valid data to assist its customers. In addition to collecting and reporting data, the Company provides analysis and consulting to help customers understand their survey results and the underlying impact on their business. It is with this insight that healthcare organizati! ons are a! ble to develop plans for improved performance that can be delivered through its learning solutions.
The Company competes with Cornerstone OnDemand, Healthcare Source, Oracle, SABA, SAP, SumTotal Systems, Avatar International, Gallup, National Research Corporation, Press Ganey Associates, Professional Research Consultants, Inc., Kenexa, Foresight, B-Line Medical, CAE/Meti, and EMS
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Healthstream (NASDAQ: HSTM) was down, falling 4.28 percent to $25.94 after Northland Securities downgraded the stock from Outperform to Market Perform and lowered the target price from $43 to $30.
- [By Sean Williams]
What: Shares of HealthStream (NASDAQ: HSTM ) , an Internet-based talent management company that provides learning solutions to the health care industry, jumped as much as 16% after the company reported its second-quarter earnings results.
- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Healthstream (NASDAQ: HSTM) was down, falling 4.28 percent to $25.94 after Northland Securities downgraded the stock from Outperform to Market Perform and lowered the target price from $43 to $30.
Top Diversified Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: SPS Commerce Inc.(SPSC)
SPS Commerce, Inc. provides on-demand supply chain management solutions worldwide. It offers integration, collaboration, connectivity, visibility, and data analytics over the Internet using a software-as-a-service model. SPS Commerce, Inc. provides its solutions through SPSCommerce.net, a hosted software suite that enables suppliers, retailers, distributors, and other customers to manage and fulfill orders. The company?s platform delivers various solutions to suppliers and retailers, including trading partner integration, trading partner enablement, trading partner intelligence, and various peripheral solutions. It also operates Retail Universe, a collaborative online Website that facilitates relationships and communications with members of the retail ecosystem. The company was formerly known as St. Paul Software, Inc. and changed its name to SPS Commerce, Inc. in May 2001. SPS Commerce, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By CRWE]
SPS Commerce (Nasdaq:SPSC), a leading provider of on-demand supply chain management solutions, and Wicresoft, a leading global IT solution service provider specializing in providing consulting, information technology and business process outsourcing, and IT infrastructure services, have partnered to provide supply chain solutions in China, Hong Kong and Japan.
Top Diversified Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: LightInTheBox Holding Co Ltd (LITB)
Lightinthebox Holding Co., Ltd., incorporated on March 2008, is a global online retail company that delivers products directly to consumers globally. The Company offers a selection of lifestyle products through www.lightinthebox.com, www.miniinthebox.com and other Websites, which are available in 17 languages. It targets lifestyle product categories. It offers products in the three core categories of apparel, small accessories and gadgets and home and garden. As of December 31, 2012, the Company had more than 205,000 product listings. It primarily conducts its operations through its Hong Kong subsidiary, Light In The Box Limited and its Peoples Republic of China subsidiary, Lanting Jishi. In January 2014, the Company acquired Seattle-based social e-commerce company, Ador, Inc.
It operates its business from mainland China and Hong Kong but has delivered its products to consumers in over 200 countries and territories. During the year ended December 31, 2012, it derived 50.7% of its net revenues from Europe and North America, respectively. The Company offers customized products, such as wedding dress and evening dress, at scale for optimal marketing, merchandising and fulfillment. As of December 31, 2012, it offered its Website was available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Japanese, Swedish, Korean, Hebrew and Finnish.
The Company�� product offerings include apparel, small accessories and gadgets, home and garden, electronics and communication devices, and others. Apparel includes customized, special occasion apparel, such as wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, groom wear, cocktail dresses, formal evening wear, graduation dresses and accessories. It also includes fast fashion, namely women's apparel that represents the latest fashion trends, under its Three Seasons / TS brand. Small accessories and gadgets category includes video game accessories, tablet computer and computer gadgets, electronics gadgets, electronic! s accessories such as electronic cables, headsets and chargers and home theater system accessories, car accessories, cell phone accessories, flashlights, lights, home and office gadgets, batteries, gifts and party supplies, toys and travel kits. Small accessories and gadgets are predominantly offered through its Website, www.miniinthebox.com.
Home and garden category includes faucets (including its own Sprinkle brand of faucets), lighting fixtures, paintings, portable home appliances, bathroom fixtures, door and window fixtures and certain types of furniture. Electronics and communication devices category includes tablet computers, car electronics, security systems, portable music and digital video disk (DVD) players, projectors, cell phones, short-wave radios, virtual display glasses and music player sunglasses. Other category includes beauty products, such as make-up supplies, wigs, footbaths, and ultrasonic cleaners. It also includes sports and outdoors products.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Lisa Levin]
LightInTheBox Holding Co (NYSE: LITB) shares tumbled 1.95% to reach a new 52-week low of $9.05. LightInTheBox's trailing-twelve-month profit margin is 1.30%.
Top Diversified Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc.(SWM)
Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. manufactures and sells paper and reconstituted tobacco products to the tobacco industry, as well as specialized paper products for use in various applications. It operates in two segments, Paper and Reconstituted Tobacco. The Paper segment primarily produces cigarette papers, such as lower ignition propensity papers, plug wrap papers, and base tipping papers to cigarette manufacturers that use to wrap various parts of a cigarette. It also offers commercial and industrial products, including lightweight printing and writing papers, battery separator papers, drinking straw wraps, filter papers, and other specialized papers to converters and other end-users or brokers. The Reconstituted Tobacco segment produces and sells reconstituted tobacco leaf, and wrapper and binder products to cigarette and cigar manufacturers. The company sells its products directly to customers in approximately 90 countries. Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Marc Bastow]
Specialty paper manufacturer and distributor Schweitzer-Mauduit (SWM) raised its quarterly dividend 20% to 36 cents per share, payable on Dec. 26 to shareholders of record as of Nov. 27.
SWM Dividend Yield: 2.78%
- [By Seth Jayson]
Calling all cash flows
When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Schweitzer-Mauduit International (NYSE: SWM ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below. - [By Tannor Pilatzke]
Schweitzer-Mauduit, Cigarette Paper Manufacturer (SWM) ��1995 Spin-off
This is the big winner of the portfolio of spin-offs and logically makes the most sense. The price has increased by around 500% since 1995, not including dividends. The Company manufactures and sells paper and reconstituted tobacco products to the tobacco industry as well as specialized paper products for use in other applications. The primary products in the group include cigarette, plug wrap and tipping papers, or Cigarette Papers, used to wrap various parts of a cigarette and reconstituted tobacco leaf, or RTL, which is used as a blend with virgin tobacco in cigarettes, reconstituted tobacco wrappers and binders for cigars. These products are sold directly to the tobacco companies or their designated converters in the Americas, Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Non-tobacco products are a diverse mix of products that includes low volume, high-value engineered papers as well as commodity paper grades produced to maximize machine utilization.
Top Diversified Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: Rex Energy Corporation(REXX)
Rex Energy Corporation operates as an independent oil and gas company in the Appalachian Basin and the Illinois Basin. It focuses on the Marcellus Shale drilling projects, and Utica Shale and Upper Devonian Shale exploration activities in the Appalachian Basin. The company also holds interests in the Lawrence Field ASP Flood project, which is an oil recovery project located in Lawrence County, Illinois. As of December 31, 2011, it operated approximately 2,117 wells, including approximately 517 disposal and injection wells. The company had estimated proved reserves of 366.2 billions of cubic feet equivalent. Rex Energy Corporation was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By The Energy Report]
Onshore, my favorite play is the Utica Shale, in which my top plays are Gulfport Energy Corp. (GPOR) and Rex Energy Corp. (REXX). Both companies have highly economic acreage, solid balance sheets and industry-leading production growth. I also like Rex Energy for its likely production upside. Another one of my favorite plays is the Eagle Ford Shale, in which my top plays are Penn Virginia Corp. (PVA) and Sanchez Energy Corp. (SN). Both have core acreage in the region, improving operating results and experienced management. Another favorite name of mine is Midstates Petroleum Co. Inc. (MPO). The company has assets in three solid plays and a management team with a long successful track record. Those are my favorite names at this time.
- [By Matt DiLallo]
The company has also shifted some of its attention to next-door neighbor Ohio's Utica Shale. It's not the only Marcellus driller to look to the higher profit potential in the liquids-rich Utica. Smaller drillers like Rex Energy (NASDAQ: REXX ) are also looking west to the Utica in an effort to grow liquids production. The company reported positive results at three recently drilled wells at its Warrior South project. While all this attention is great for the Utica, Pennsylvania would rather have drillers investing that drilling capital within its borders to add more jobs and tax revenue. �
- [By Matt DiLallo]
These infrastructure additions are important for Gulfport Energy� (NASDAQ: GPOR ) �which is pouring nearly all of its resources into developing the Utica's assets. If its wells provide the type of production it is expecting, this infrastructure build-out will prove critical to Gulfport's ability to deliver its product to market. The additions are also important for Rex Energy (NASDAQ: REXX ) which is investing more than 30% of its more than $255 million 2013 capital budget to develop its acreage in the Utica.
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