With shares of Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) trading at around $24.48, is CSCO an OUTPERFORM, WAIT AND SEE or STAY AWAY? Let�� analyze the stock with the relevant sections of our CHEAT SHEET investing framework:
C = Catalyst for the Stock�� Movement
Due diligence can lead to a lot of valuable information, especially for experienced researchers. However, potential investors often overlook one very important component, which is what employees think about their employer. Of course, those on the inside are going to offer valuable information.
According to Glassdoor.com, employees rate their employer a 3.5 out of 5, and 77 percent of employees would recommend the company to a friend. A relatively impressive 77 percent of employees approve of CEO John Chambers. These numbers are important, but let�� delve a little deeper. Please keep in mind that the following information is a summarization of various (and anonymous) employee comments.
Cisco employees tend to agree on many points. One is overexpansion in China and India. Two is aiming for cheaper employees opposed to those who can work faster or better. Three is too many reorganizations, which leaves less time for execution on existing programs. Four is a top-heavy management structure that leads to�internal politics taking a precedence over customer needs and defeating competition. Five is too much bureaucracy, which has limited the company’s full�potential. The last two points are normal for a large company. The former three points are potential negatives. On the positive side, employees enjoy the superior technology and organization.
5 Best Gas Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Intel Corporation(INTC)
Intel Corporation engages in the design, manufacture, and sale of integrated circuits for computing and communications industries worldwide. It offers microprocessor products used in notebooks, netbooks, desktops, servers, workstations, storage products, embedded applications, communications products, consumer electronics devices, and handhelds. The company also provides system on chip products that integrate its core processing functionalities with other system components, such as graphics, audio, and video, onto a single chip. In addition, it offers chipset products that send data between the microprocessor and input, display, and storage devices, including keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive, and CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drives; motherboards designed for desktop, server, and workstation platforms, and that has connectors for attaching devices to the bus; and wired and wireless connectivity products consisting of network adapters and embedded wireless cards used to translate and transmit data across networks. Further, the company provides NAND flash memory products primarily used in portable memory storage devices, digital camera memory cards, and solid-state drives; software products comprising operating systems, middleware, and tools used to develop, run, and manage various enterprise, consumer, embedded, and handheld devices; and software development tools that enable the creation of applications. Additionally, it develops computing platforms, which are integrated hardware and software computing technologies designed to offer an optimized solution. The company sells its products principally to original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, PC components and other products users, and other manufacturers of industrial and communications equipment. It has a strategic alliance with Scientific Conservation Inc. Intel Corporation was founded in 1968 and is based in Santa Clara, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Tim Brugger]
"That was then, this is now" is an oft-repeated adage directly applicable to investors seeking new opportunities. The old saying takes on special meaning at this time of year as shareholders look back at their portfolio's performance as a first step in determining what to expect in 2015. After a banner 2014, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC ) shareholders have much to consider heading into the new year.
- [By Nicholas Kitonyi]
Long time business partners Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) and Intel Corporation (INTC) have also turned into competitors, as they capitalize on the disruptive technology to produce products that compete directly with HP's.
- [By Travis Hoium]
On the downside, the PC sector took a huge hit yesterday when IDC said PC sales fell 13.9% in the first quarter. This has pushed shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC ) down 5% and 2%, respectively. Investors were clinging to hope that PC sales would stabilize while Microsoft and Intel prepared for their mobile futures, but that doesn't appear to be the case. According to IDC analyst Jay Chou, corporate buyers are putting off PC purchases because computers are lasting longer and users want to avoid updating to Windows 8.
Hot Tech Stocks To Watch For 2014: Micrel Incorporated(MCRL)
Micrel Incorporated, doing business as Micrel Semiconductor, designs, develops, manufactures, and markets high-performance analog power, mixed-signal, and digital integrated circuits (ICs) primarily in North America, Europe, and Asia. It offers power management products, including cloud, single-board, and enterprise servers; network switches and routers; storage area networks; and wireless base stations for the networking and communications infrastructure markets. The company also provides power management standard products for industrial, consumer, defense, and automotive electronics markets. In addition, it manufactures custom analog and mixed-signal circuits; and provides wafer foundry services for the customers who produce electronic systems for communications, consumer, and military applications. Further, the company offers general linear parts; power analog circuits; high speed physical media devices and interface ICs; and Ethernet products, which comprise physical l ayer transceivers, media access controllers, switches, and system-on-chip devices. Additionally, it provides radio frequency (RF) data communications products, including QwikRadio family of RF receivers and transmitters, which include garage door openers, lighting and fan controls, automotive keyless entry, and remote controls; and RadioWire transceivers for applications, such as remote metering, security systems, and factory automation. The company?s products address a range of end markets, including cellular handsets, portable computing, enterprise and home networking, wide area and metropolitan area networks, digital televisions, and industrial equipment. Micrel Incorporated sells its products through a network of independent sales representatives, independent distributors, and stocking representative firms, as well as through a direct sales staff. The company was founded in 1978 and is based in San Jose, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By gurujx]
Micrel (MCRL): CFO/VP Finance/HR Ray Wallin Sold 59,701 Shares
CFO/VP Finance/HR of Micrel, Inc. (MCRL) Ray Wallin sold 59,701 shares during the past week at an average price of $9.56.
- [By Evan Niu, CFA]
What: Shares of Micrel (NASDAQ: MCRL ) jumped temporarily this morning, up by as much as 10% before giving back nearly all of those gains, following first-quarter earnings.
Hot Tech Stocks To Watch For 2014: Meru Networks Inc.(MERU)
Meru Networks, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides wireless local area network (LAN) solutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It offers a virtualized wireless LAN solution based on its System Director Operating System, which runs on its controllers and access points to enable enterprises to deliver business-critical applications over wireless networks. The company?s System Director Operating System provides centralized coordination and control of various access points on the network; controllers synchronize access points to optimize the user experience and manage traffic on the network; and Wi-Fi certified access points to provide network connectivity for wireless devices. It also offers Meru Networks E(z)RF application suite comprising E(z)RF Network Manager, E(z)RF Service Assurance Manager, E(z)RF Location Manager, E(z)RF OnTheGo, Spectrum Manager, and wired and wireless management solutions, which enable enterprises to configure, monitor, troubleshoot, secure, and operate virtualized wireless LAN solution. In addition, the company provides Identity Manager that simplifies enterprise network access and identity management; Wireless Intrusion Prevention System to recognize and mitigate threats; Compliance Manager to reduce the risk of security breach by protecting customer and employee personal information by extending security to the wireless network; AirFirewall to intercept and block unwanted communications as they transmit over the air, stopping them before they reach the network; and Security Gateway SG1000 to meet the demands of the Federal Information Processing Standard, 140-2 Level 3 security required by federal government agencies and other security-conscious organizations. It serves the education, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, technology, finance, government, telecom, transportation, and utility markets. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Eric Volkman]
Meru Networks (NASDAQ: MERU ) isn't wasting any time in finding a successor to one of its top executives. The company announced Monday it had appointed Brian McDonald to be its new CFO to replace the resigning Brett White. McDonald took up his position today, although White will remain at the firm through July 1 in order "to effect a smooth transition."
Hot Tech Stocks To Watch For 2014: Communications Systems Inc.(JCS)
Communications Systems, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells modular connecting and wiring devices, digital subscriber line filters, structured wiring systems, and media and rate conversion products primarily in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company?s Suttle segment manufactures and markets copper and fiber connectivity systems, enclosure systems, XDSL filters and splitters, and active technologies for voice, data, and video communications under the Suttle brand name; and residential structured wiring products under the SOHO Access brand name. This segment offers its products directly and through distributors to communication companies, smaller telephone companies, electrical/low voltage contractors, home builders, cable customers, and original equipment manufacturers. Its Transition Networks segment designs, assembles, and markets network interface devices, media converters, network interface cards, Ethernet switches, sma ll form factor pluggable modules, and other connectivity products under the Transition Networks and MILAN brand names. This segment sells its products through distributors, resellers, integrators, and original equipment manufacturers. The company?s JDL Technologies segment offers information technology (IT) solutions, including network design and integration IT service management, network security, desktop virtualization, and managed network operation center services. This segment serves educational clients, IT value added resellers, and managed service providers, as well as healthcare, enterprise, and government markets. Its Austin Taylor segment provides telephony and data networking products to telecommunications companies, distributors, and installers. This segment designs and manufactures external metal cabinets and internal metal boxes to industry standards and to customer specifications. The company was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Advisors' Opinion:
- [By Victor Selva]
On Dec.24, Mario Gabelli, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GAMCO Investors, Inc. added Communications Systems Inc. (JCS) at an average price of $11.05 and currently holds 330,172 shares of the stock. It was the 5th time he added the stock during this year, which makes me feel that he is betting in favor of a positive future for the consumption of network capacity.
Recommendations of the Board
Communications Systems is engaged in the manufacture and sale of modular connecting and wiring devices for voice and data communications, digital subscriber line filters, and structured wiring systems, and through its Transition Networks business unit in the manufacture of media and rate conversion products for telecommunications networks.
Few months ago the firm announced�a series of actions to increase revenues and improve profitability. The first change was to operate as a holding company, monitoring and supporting all the business units: Suttle, Transition Networks (TN) unit and JDL Technologies. With this ��ew format�� each unit will operate with a high degree of autonomy. This will result in the reduction of labor costs, the emphasizing of accountability in the units as well as better recognition of performance. "While difficult decisions for the Board, we believe the changes we have taken to restructure our parent company as a holding company and to focus on individual business unit performance is in the best interest of our shareholders and will increase shareholder value" said Curtis A. Sampson, the Company's Board Chair and Interim CEO. Furthermore, strategic investments in the TN unit such as marketing, sales and product development will boost revenues in the future.
Severe Warning Signs
Not all are good news, we found three severe warning signs issued by GuruFocus: Piotroski F-Score of 2 is low, which usually implies poor business operation; revenue has been in decline over the past 3 years and operating margin has been in 5-year
Hot Tech Stocks To Watch For 2014: Clicksoftware Technologies Ltd (CKSW)
ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (ClickSoftware), incorporated in 1979, is a provider of software products and solutions for workforce management and optimization for the service sector. The Company derives revenues from the licensing of its software products and the provision of consulting and support services. It also generates revenues from Cloud-based solutions. under software as a service (SaaS) model. ClickSoftware�� solutions are grouped into four main suites which together comprise its Service Optimization Suite: Field Service Daily Suite, Mobility Suite, Roster (Shift Planning) Suite and Forecasting and Planning Suite. Additionally, it offers variations of its products for certain vertical markets, including Mid-Market Package - Installation, Maintenance and Repair Services (ClickIMRS) and Service Tycoon. Its products include: ClickSchedule, ClickAnalyze, ClickLocate, ClickContact, ClickRoster, ClickPlan, and ClickForecast. In March 2014, the Company acquired Xora Inc., a cloud-based mobile workforce management.
Field Service Daily Suite covers automatic decision making and optimization support to manage field service operations: commencing from appointment booking and scheduling during the period around the day of service, followed by real time scheduling and optimization during the day of service and culminating with reports and business metrics analytics after the day of service. Roster (Shift Planning) Suite covers shift planning needs for both the manager, as well as the employee to optimize the balance between staffing levels needed for serving customers and managing labor costs, and employee preferences. This suite is offered in several configurations for different industry verticals ranging from police forces to contact centers, and more. Mobility Suite covers the needs of the mobile individual and back-office staff for field data communication, such as sending jobs from the back office to the person�� hand-held device, and the person�� ability to accept/decline the ! job, report on progress and job completion, as well as capturing customers��signatures, or sending the person�� own time sheet to the back office. Geography support, such as travel guidance and information about underground equipment are also covered.
ClickSchedule optimizes service scheduling and routing to improve workforce productivity by balancing customer, service and asset resources, and organizational preferences, including contractual commitments, priority, drive time, skills, and service and asset resources availability. ClickAnalyze provides reporting, monitoring and service business analytics for workforce performance measurement and strategic decision support. It enables analysis of key performance indicators, including resource productivity, operational costs, and responsiveness to customers.
ClickLocate (LBS) captures the location information of a field service engineer and/or his or her vehicle obtained via GPS or other technology and integrates it with ClickSchedule for use in optimized scheduling. LBS then enables service organizations to improve their service operations by allowing them to make decisions and take actions based on location information, including near real-time engineer locations. ClickContact is a customer interaction management solution that enables self-service appointment booking, order updating, automatic customer notifications and customer satisfaction surveying. From scheduling the initial appointment through enabling a post-service follow-up survey, ClickContact provides customer interaction management throughout the service lifecycle.
ClickRoster provides interactive and automated workforce shift planning based on forecasted workload by quantities and skill requirements, rules and regulations, working contracts, engineer skills, calendar and preferences. ClickPlan provides interactive and automated workforce planning for staffing and deployment of the field workforce based on forecasted workload. It is designed ! to enable! service organizations to resolve workforce shortages and surpluses weeks and months in advance. ClickForecast provides field service workload forecasting to enable companies to project workforce capacity. It enables service managers, marketing, and sales to determine the demand levels of customers, and to create multiple forecast scenarios, each with different business assumptions. (ClickIMRS) is a pre-configured package that has been tailored to the needs of small and mid-sized companies. ClickIMRS features pre-configured scheduling and reporting that reduces the expense, time and effort required to custom-design and program schedules and reports. In addition, the ready-to-use reports provide insight into service operations and streamline decision-making on the part of both service management and dispatchers.
ClickSoftware Cloud Services include two Web-based offerings of its complete Service Optimization Suite. ClickCloud offers medium and market enterprise customers an alternative to on-premises deployment of the Service Optimization Suite. ClickCloud also enables a hybrid information technology (IT) model, which is a solution comprised of a mix of Cloud and on-premises deployment ClickExpress offers the customers to be up and running within a relatively short period of time, with its products.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Sean Williams]
Optimize your buying
Software companies these days are being judged not just by how many new contracts they gained during the current quarter, but by how well they're prepared to deal with the transition to cloud platforms. Supply-chain and workforce-optimization software developer ClickSoftware Technologies (NASDAQ: CKSW ) looks well poised to take advantage of these trends and has no business, in my opinion, being anywhere near a 52-week low. - [By Evan Niu, CFA]
What: Shares of ClickSoftware (NASDAQ: CKSW ) have plunged today by as much as 13% after the company warned that second-quarter results would fall short of expectations.
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