The banks are suffering again and this gives me a very good opportunity to increase my understanding of their business. After looking at the balance sheet and the leverage of a bank, today we are moving to more interesting things. In this article, I will look at ways to come up with an idea of how a particular bank does its business. Understanding the business model, the lending practices, the growth the bank expects is very important before jumping in. This will be a differentiator between a good and less speculative investment to a haphazard and highly speculative one.
If within reasons we can come up with a way to measure the management and the business model of a bank, then we will have a better confidence in putting our money in the bank. Let us look at these issues in more detail.
Measuring growth
Deposit growth is one of the first things to look at. The historical figure will tell you if the bank has been able to attract money from its customers. As we have seen and discussed before, customer deposits are the cheapest way for a bank to get money. If a bank is not getting enough raw material from customers, it will have to borrow funds from less attractive venues, like debt offering, equity offering, or borrowing from other banks.
5 Best Integrated Utility Stocks To Buy For 2015: Ultrapar Participacoes S.A. (UGP)
Ultrapar Holdings Inc. operates in the petrochemical and chemical sectors. The company operates in four segments: Gas Distribution, Fuel Distribution, Chemicals, and Storage. It distributes both bottled and bulk liquefied petroleum gas for residential, commercial, and industrial customers through approximately 58 points of sales; a network of 4,700 independent retailers; and independent dealers, as well as through its own retail stores. The company also distributes diesel, gasoline, ethanol, natural gas for vehicles, fuel oil, kerosene, lubricants, and greases directly to customers, as well as through a network of service stations. As of December 31, 2012, it operated 6,460 service stations under the Ipiranga brand. In addition, the company produces and markets various chemical and petrochemical products, including ethylene oxide, ethylene glycols, ethanolamines, glycol ethers, and methyl-ethyl-ketone for chemical companies, and surface coating and polyester producers; and fatty-alcohols and related by-products, as well as specialty chemicals that are used as surfactants, softeners, dispersants, emulsifiers, and hydraulic fluids for industrial and commercial enterprises. Its chemical products are used in a range of industrial sectors, such as cosmetics, detergents, crop protection chemicals, polyester, packaging, textiles, coatings, and oil industry. Further, the company stores and handles liquid bulk, including chemicals, fuels, and vegetable oil; and offers ship loading and unloading services, as well as engages in the operation of pipelines, logistics programming, and installation engineering. Ultrapar Holdings Inc. offers its products and services primarily in Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay, and the United States. The company was founded in 1937 and is headquartered in S茫o Paulo, Brazil.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Brian Pacampara]
Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, Brazilian liquefied petroleum gas distributor Ultrapar Holdings (NYSE: UGP ) has earned a respected four-star ranking.
Top 5 Cheapest Companies To Buy For 2014: Ruckus Wireless Inc (RKUS)
Ruckus Wireless, Inc (Ruckus), incorporated August 19, 2002, is a provider of Wi-Fi solutions. The Company�� solutions, which it calls Smart Wi-Fi, are used by service providers and enterprises to solve network challenges. The Company�� products include gateways, controllers and access points. These products incorporate its technologies, including Smart Radio, Smart QoS, Smart Mesh, SmartCell and Smart Scaling. The Company sells its products to service providers and enterprises globally, and as of December 31, 2012, had sold its products to over 21,700 end-customers worldwide. During 2012, the Company added over 10,100 new end-customers. The Company�� enterprise end-customers are typically mid-sized organizations in a variety of industries, including hospitality, education, healthcare, warehousing and logistics, corporate enterprise, retail, state and local government and public venues, such as stadiums, convention centers, airports and outdoor public areas. Effective July 23, 2013, Ruckus Wireless Inc acquired YFind Technologies Pte Ltd.
The Company sells directly and indirectly to a range of service providers, including mobile operators, cable companies, wholesale operators and fixed-line carriers. As of December 31, 2012, the Company had over 65 service provider end-customers, including Bright House Networks, The Cloud (a BSkyB Company), KDDI, Tikona Digital Networks, Time Warner Cable and Towerstream. The Company�� Smart Wi-Fi solutions are marketed under the SmartCell, ZoneDirector, ZoneFlex and FlexMaster brands and include a range of indoor and outdoor access points (APs), long range point-to-point and point-to-multipoint bridges, wireless local area network (LAN), controllers, network management software and gateway systems with integrated advanced wireless software.
The Company�� core Smart Wi-Fi technologies include Smart Radio, Smart QoS, Smart Mesh, SmartCell and Smart Scaling. Smart Radio is a set of advanced hardware and software capabilities that auto! matically adjust Wi-Fi signals to changes in environmental conditions. A primary component of Smart Radio technology is BeamFlex, a smart antenna system that makes Wi-Fi signals stronger by focusing them only where they are needed and dynamically steering them in directions that yield the highest throughput for each receiving device. Another component is ChannelFly, a performance optimization capability that automatically determines, which radio frequencies or channels deliver the network throughput based on actual observed capacity, a key benefit for high-density, noisy Wi-Fi environments.
Smart QoS is a software technology that manages traffic load to enhance the user experience. Smart QoS was developed to handle the increasing volumes of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and streaming video traffic. Smart QoS offers automatic prioritization of different traffic types through intelligent analytics that classify, prioritize and schedule traffic for transmission. Smart QoS employs advanced queuing techniques and dedicated software queues on a per device basis to ensure fairness and optimize overall system performance. Smart QoS includes its band steering, rate limiting, client load balancing and airtime fairness techniques.
Smart Mesh is software technology that uses advanced self-organizing network principles to create Wi-Fi backbone links between access points. Smart Mesh automatically establishes wireless connections between individual access points using patented smart antenna technology and self-heals in the event of a failed link.
SmartCell is a key technology behind the Company�� SmartCell Gateway platform that integrates software and specialized hardware deployed at the edge of service provider networks to facilitate the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular infrastructures. SmartCell includes a set of modular software components ,as well as standard network interfaces into the mobile core that enable Wi-Fi to become a standard access mechanism for service ! providers! . Management components provide configuration, user management, analytics, accounting and other operational and maintenance functions.
Smart Scaling uses advanced database management techniques to enable the support of hundreds of thousands to millions of client devices across the Wi-Fi network. Smart Scaling employs intelligent data distribution techniques to extend client information, statistics and other vital user information across any number of nodes within the system without a single point of failure and with linear scalability. Smart Scaling is incorporated in its purpose-built hardware and software, making it capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of access points and user session workloads at the scale required by service providers.
SmartCell Gateway is a platform that integrates software and specialized hardware deployed at the edge of service provider networks to facilitate the integration of Wi-Fi and cellular infrastructures. The Company�� SmartCell Gateway is designed to be vendor-agnostic and can control third-party APs. SmartCell Gateway provides standard-based interfaces into existing and future mobile networks to simplify integration.
SmartCell access point addresses the capacity and density needs of service providers deploying networks within urban environments. SmartCell APs employ modular multimode architecture to enable service providers to deploy Wi-Fi, 3G/4G small cell cellular technology and Wi-Fi mesh backhaul within a single device. This provides operators with the ability to enhance and extend their macro networks, injecting much needed capacity into high traffic user environments with the flexibility to deploy Wi-Fi with Smart Mesh backhaul and upgrade to Wi-Fi with 3G/LTE when and where desired without any mounting or backhaul changes.
The Company�� ZoneDirector Smart WLAN controllers use a intuitive Web user interface to make configuration and administration extremely simple. This software includes a variety of ! advanced ! capabilities such as adaptive meshing, integrated client performance tools, authentication support, simplified guest access and user policy, wireless intrusion prevention, automatic traffic redirection, integrated Wi-Fi client performance tools and robust network management. ZoneFlex access points incorporate BeamFlex adaptive antenna array technology to deliver robust Wi-Fi performance, reliability and capacity. These devices support multiple virtual wireless LANs, Wi-Fi encryption and advanced traffic handling. The Company�� ZoneFlex outdoor Smart Wi-Fi access points and point-to-point and multipoint bridges can be deployed as stand-alone APs or be centrally managed.
In addition to the Company�� hardware products, the Company also sells software products. FlexMaster is a Linux-based Wi-Fi management service platform used by enterprises and service providers to monitor and administrate networks. FlexMaster provides configuration, fault detection, audit, performance management and optimization of remote Ruckus access points or wireless LAN controllers. It offers a single point for management and a number of automated and customized facilities such as an intuitive dashboard. FlexMaster is designed to operate with existing operational support system and features tiered administration to provide managed wireless LAN or cloud-based wireless services.
The Company competes with Cisco Systems, Ericsson; Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Aruba Networks.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Lee Jackson]
Ruckus Wireless Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) is a favorite to maintain a healthy top line growth, with the increased popularity and success of its products and services in the Wi-Fi marketplace. Also, with the sustained shift from the use of PCs to smartphones and tablets, the need for Wi-Fi capacity and coverage solutions will steadily increase. The Deutsche Bank target price for the stock is $14 and should rise, while consensus for this top mid cap name is $23.
- [By gurujx]
Ruckus Wireless (RKUS): CFO Seamus Hennessy Sold 50,000 Shares
CFO Seamus Hennessy sold 50,000 shares of RKUS stock on Sept. 6 at the average price of $15.12. The price of the stock has increased by 1.19% since.
- [By Rick Munarriz]
Monday
The market kicks off a new trading week with Ruckus Wireless (NYSE: RKUS ) reporting quarterly results on Monday. The provider of wireless systems for the mobile Internet infrastructure market went public in November at $15. It moved lower initially, but the stock has crept into the high teens ahead of Monday's report.
Top 5 Cheapest Companies To Buy For 2014: Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (JEC)
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. provides professional, technical, and construction services. Its services include engineering, design, and architectural services; construction and construction management services; operations and maintenance services; and process, scientific, and systems consulting services. The company serves a range of companies and organizations comprising industrial, commercial, and government clients across multiple markets and geographies. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. provides its services to various industries and markets consisting of oil and gas exploration, production, and refining; environmental programs; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology; chemicals and polymers; buildings; infrastructure; power; technology and manufacturing; consumer products; and pulp and paper. The company provides its services through its offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. was founded in 1947 and is based in Pa sadena, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By John Udovich]
Mid cap infrastructure construction stock Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. (NYSE: CBI) fell 7.23% after being trashed in an article by an apparent�short seller posted on Seeking Alpha, meaning its worth taking a closer look at the stock along with the performance of potential benchmarks like Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE: JEC), KBR, Inc (NYSE: KBR) and First Trust ISE Global Engineering and Construction Index Fund ETF (NYSEARCA: FLM).
- [By Ben Levisohn]
URS Corp, which competes with the likes of Fluor (FLR), Jacobs Engineering (JEC) and Tetra Tech (TTEK), said it would earn between $3.20 and $3.30 a share in 2013–the previous range had been between $4.10 and $4.25 a share–and also offered guidance for 2014 that was well below analyst forecasts. On the plus side, URS said it would buy its shares back at a faster pace than previously announced.
- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Top losers in the sector included Chart Industries (NASDAQ: GTLS), Jacobs Engineering Group (NYSE: JEC), and ABB (NYSE: ABB).
Top Headline
Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) reported a 7% rise in its first-quarter profit. Merck's quarterly profit surged to $1.71 billion, or $0.57 per share, compared to a year-ago profit of $1.59 billion, or $0.52 per share. Excluding certain items, Merck earned $0.88 per share, up from $0.85 per share Its revenue dropped 4% to $10.26 billion versus $10.67 billion. However, analysts were estimating earnings of $0.79 per share on revenue of $10.43 billion. Merck reiterated its full-year earnings forecast of $2.15 to $2.47 per share.
Top 5 Cheapest Companies To Buy For 2014: Vanguard Energy Index ETF (VDE)
Vanguard Energy ETF, formerly known as Vanguard Energy VIPERs, is an exchange-traded share class of Vanguard Energy Index Fund (the Fund). The Fund employs a passive management or indexing investment approach designed to track the performance of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) US Investable Market Energy Index (the Index), an index of stocks of large, medium and small United States companies in the energy sector, as classified under the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS).
This GICS sector is made up of companies whose businesses are dominated by activities, such as the construction or provision of oil rigs, drilling equipment, and other energy-related service and equipment (such as seismic data collection), or companies engaged in the exploration, production, marketing, refining and/or transportation of oil and gas products. The Fund seeks to replicate the Index by investing all, or substantially all, of its assets in the stocks that make up the Index.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By MONEYMORNING.COM]
I like the idea of investing in a group of the largest integrated energy companies, oil and gas explorers/producers, and energy equipment and services. It's like a call option on energy with no expiry date. One of the best alternatives in this sector is the Vanguard Energy ETF (NYSE: VDE).
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