That zipping sound you hear is home-health provider�Amedisys‘ (AMED) 24% surge on news that�private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.�has a stake of more than 8% in the stock.
CRT Capital analyst Sheryl Skolnick, a critic of company management, upgrades to “fair value” this morning and essentially tells clients to get out of KKR’s way, since the firm could end up ushering in a new board and management:
There are times when this analyst will ‘take on’ shareholders with differing views and there are times when she knows, from long experience, not to even think about it. This is one of the latter times ….
We know that when activists get involved, strange and interesting things happen, even (especially?) with entrenched managements. For the record, we think it unlikely that this part of KKR will take AMED private: filing a 13-D that almost surely takes the stock up would be that act of amateurs, in our view, not the act of a savvy firm like KKR. Some may conclude from the language of the 13-D that KKR may not actually become active. We reviewed it and found it nearly identical to other activists’ initial statements: then things changed. Thus, a new Board and management does seem likely and is indeed the strategy we advocated in our 4/3/13 report and THAT is the root cause of our upgrade.
Best Sliver Stocks For 2015: GFI Group Inc. (GFIG)
GFI Group Inc. provides wholesale brokerage, clearing, electronic execution, and trading support products for financial markets. The company offers brokerage and trade execution services, clearing services, market data and trading platform, and other software products to institutional customers. The company provides brokerage services in fixed income derivatives, bond instruments, and other related products; financial instruments, including foreign exchange options, exotic options, non-U.S. Dollar interest rate swaps and options, repurchase agreements, forward and non-deliverable forward contracts, and government and municipal bond options; cash-based and derivative equity products, such as the U.S. domestic and international equity stocks, global depositary receipts, American depositary receipts, and equity derivatives; and cash-based and derivative commodity, and energy products comprising oil, natural gas, biofuel, electricity, wet and dry freight derivatives, dry physi cal freight, precious metals, coal, property derivatives, emissions, ethanol, and soft commodities. It also offers clearing, brokerage, settlement, and back-office services to proprietary traders, brokers, market makers, and hedge funds; provides capital to start-up trading groups, small hedge funds, market-makers, and individual traders; licenses multi-asset class electronic trading and order management software to brokers, exchanges, and traders in the commodities, fixed income, currencies, and equities markets; and offers FENICS Professional, a suite of price discovery, price distribution, trading, risk management, and straight-through processing components. The company primarily serves investment and commercial banks, large corporations, asset managers, insurance companies, hedge funds, and proprietary trading firms in the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; and Asia. GFI Group Inc. was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jayson Derrick]
CME Group (NYSE: CME) has agreed to acquire GFI Group (NASDAQ: GFIG) for $4.55 per share and will immediately sell it's wholesale brokerage and clearing business back to a group led by GFI Management. CME will retain GFI Group's Trayport which provides trading software in the European energy markets as well as FENICS, a provider of price discovery, analytics, risk-management and workflow connectivity services for over the counter foreign exchange options markets. Shares of CME Group gained 0.44 percent, closing at $75.83 while shares of GFI Group surged to new 52-week highs of $4.50 before closing the day at $4.47, up 43.73 percent.
Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks For 2014: DiamondRock Hospitality Co (DRH)
DiamondRock Hospitality Company, incorporated on May 6, 2004, is a lodging-focused Maryland corporation operating as a real estate investment trust (REIT). It owns a portfolio of 27 premium hotels and resorts that contain 11,590 guest rooms. It also holds the senior note on a mortgage loan secured by an additional hotel and has the right to acquire, upon completion, a hotel under development. Its portfolio is concentrated in key gateway cities and destination resorts. Each of its hotels is managed by a third party and are operated under a brand owned by one of the global lodging brand companies (Marriott International, Inc. (Marriott), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (Starwood) or Hilton Worldwide (Hilton)). In November 2013, the Company sold the Torrance Marriott South Bay.
The Company conducts its business through an umbrella partnership REIT (UPREIT), in which its hotel properties are owned by its operating partnership, DiamondRock Hospitality Limited Partnership, or subsidiaries of its operating partnership. Its properties are concentrated in key gateway cities (primarily New York City, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles) and in destination resort locations , such as the United States Virgin Islands and Vail, Colorado.
During the year ended December 31, 2012, it acquired five new hotels and sold four non-core hotels located in the markets: Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts ; Burlington, Vermont; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois ; Denver, Colorado ; Fort Worth, Texas; Los Angeles, California ; Minneapolis, Minnesota; New York, New York ; Oak Brook, Illinois; Orlando, Florida; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego, California; San Francisco, California; Sonoma, California; St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; Vail, Colorado and Washington, D.C. It also owns a senior mortgage loan secured by a 443-room hotel located in Chicago, Illinois and have the right to acquire, upon completion, a 282-room hotel under development in New York City.
On July ! 12, 2012, it acquired a portfolio of four hotels from affiliates of Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI. The portfolio consists of the Hilton Boston Downtown, Westin Washington D.C. City Center, Westin San Diego and Hilton Burlington. The portfolio consists of the 362-room Hilton Boston Downtown, the 406-room Westin Washington, D.C. City Center, the 436-room Westin San Diego and the 258-room Hilton Burlington. On November 9, 2012, it acquired the 94-room Hotel Rex located in San Francisco, California. On March 23, 2012, it completed the sale of a three-hotel portfolio. The portfolio consisted of the Griffin Gate Marriott Resort and Spa, the Renaissance Waverly, and the Renaissance Austin. On October 3, 2012, it completed the sale of the Atlanta Westin North at Perimeter.
The Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort, the Orlando Airport Marriott and the Hilton Garden Inn Chelsea/New York City each failed its performance test at the end of 2012. The Bethesda Marriott Suites hotel is subject to a ground lease. The Courtyard Manhattan/Fifth Avenue is subject to a ground lease. The Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown is subject to two ground leases: one ground lease covers the land under the hotel and the other ground lease covers the portion of the hotel that extends into the City Creek Center. The Westin Boston Waterfront is subject to a ground lease. The Hilton Minneapolis is subject to a ground lease. In addition, the golf course that is part of the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort is subject to a ground lease covering approximately 110 acres. A portion of the parking garage relating to the Renaissance Worthington is subject to three ground leases that cover, contiguously with each other, approximately 1/4 of the land on which the parking garage is constructed. Furthermore, these ground leases generally require them to obtain and maintain insurance covering the subject property.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Laura Brodbeck]
Monday
Earnings Releases Expected: �McKesson�(NYSE: MCK), Concho Resources (NYSE: CXO), Diamondrock Hospitality (NYSE: DRH) Economic Releases Expected: �US Federal budget balance, Indian industrial productionTuesday
- [By Marc Bastow]
Lodging-focused real estate investment trust (REIT) DiamondRock (DRH) raised its dividend 21% to 10.25 cents per share, payable April 10 to shareholders of record as of March 31. Yielding more than 3%, DRH stock has the highest yield of this week’s dividend stocks increasing payouts.
DRH Dividend Yield: 3.38%
Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks For 2014: SourcingLink.net Inc (SNET)
SourcingLink.net, Inc., incorporated in 1994, was involved in developing and deploying merchandise-sourcing solutions for the retail industry prior to its operating assets sale in March 2004. The Company's Internet-based, hosted solutions for the pre-order phase of business-to-business merchandise procurement enabled retailers to organize, automate and reduce the cost of their merchandise-sourcing activities by locating and connecting directly with their retail merchandise suppliers around the globe. Its solution, branded MySourcingCenter, provided an online location for search, display and comparison functions, and linked and managed the data and communications between retailers and merchandise suppliers in industry-specific private environments, organizing and automating sourcing or pre-order merchandise procurement activities over the Internet. The majority of the Company's revenue through the fiscal years ended March 31, 2001 (fiscal 2001) to 2003 (fiscal 2003) was generated from a contract entered into, in March 2000, with Carrefour S.A. After completion of the Carrefour agreement, SourcingLink.net, Inc. was unable to procure additional contracts to replace the revenue generated by the Carrefour agreement.
SourcingLink.net sold its operating assets and intellectual property, and its two customer contracts in two separate transactions, in March 2004, (collectively, the operating assets sale), and ceased its operating business at that time. Its fixed assets, software, intellectual property and customer contracts related to Internet-based merchandise sourcing solution were sold to a third party in Europe. The Company's list of potential customers and certain Lotus Notes templates related to its professional services business were sold to a separate foreign company.
Prior to the operating assets sale in March 2004, the Company also performed professional services that accounted for the majority of its revenue since fiscal 2001. Its professional services enabled customers to ! implement Internet-based electronic negotiations (eSourcing) solutions. SourcingLink.net's service offering was buyer auction programs, which encompassed assessment, savings delivery and training aimed at optimizing auction processes within the buying organization.
MySourcingCenter is an online sourcing solution for finding, displaying, comparing and negotiating the purchase of products. The Company provided customers with a turnkey solution, including project management for buyer rollout and both online and global helpdesk support for buyers and suppliers. Reporting and forms were standardized for suppliers and standard forms were also available for retailers. In addition, SourcingLink.net mapped standard supplier data to any forms specification the retailer may have had, providing a customized display to meet retailer requirements. All of the underlying software resided outside of customer firewalls in a third party co-location facility.
The Company's only customer for MySourcingCenter was the international purchasing department of France-based Leroy Merlin. It also signed a contract with a United States-based customer, for which initial planning had occurred prior to the operating assets sale in March 2004.
SourcingLink.net provided professional services in the area of Internet-based, pre-order merchandise procurement. It assisted retailers in the conduct of online real-time negotiation events and trained buying organizations to become autonomous in conducting such events. Related to the Company's Internet solution, it provided project management for retailer implementations of MySourcingCenter. SourcingLink.net provided services to Carrefour, from April 2000, through mid-fiscal 2004, under a three-year contract. This contract provided the majority of the Company's revenues during the prior three fiscal years. It also provided services to the WorldWide Retail Exchange and certain of its members. One such contract provided about one-third of its services revenue ! during fi! scal year 2004. The Company's professional services customers included Carrefour, under the Carrefour contract, and members of several industry exchanges, including the WorldWide Retail Exchange, a retail industry exchange with 60 members around the globe, and CPGmarkets, an exchange for manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, whose members are in Europe.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Peter Graham]
Small cap stocks IDGlobal Corp (OTCMKTS: IDGC), Embarr Downs Inc (OTCMKTS: EMBR) and SourcingLink.net, Inc (OTCMKTS: SNET) have been getting some extra attention in various investment newsletters or investor alerts lately as at least two of these stocks have been the subject of paid promotions or other types of investor relations activities. Of course, there is nothing wrong with properly disclosed promotions or investor relations activities. But just how hot are these two small cap stocks? Here is a closer look and a quick reality check:
Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks For 2014: The Blackstone Group L.P.(BX)
The Blackstone Group, L.P., together with its subsidiaries, provides alternative asset management and financial advisory services worldwide. The company operates in five segments: Private Equity, Real Estate, Hedge Fund Solutions, Credit Businesses, and Financial Advisory. The Private Equity segment involves in private equity investing through five general private equity funds and one specialized fund focusing on communications-related investments. This segment engages in various transactions comprising leveraged buyout acquisitions of seasoned companies, transactions involving growth equity or start-up businesses in established industries, minority investments, corporate partnerships, distressed debt, structured securities, and industry consolidations. The Real Estate segment manages general opportunistic real estate funds and internationally focused opportunistic real estate funds. This segment also has debt investment funds targeting non-controlling real estate debt-rel ated investment opportunities in the public and private markets, primarily in the United States and Europe. The Hedge Fund Solutions segment manages funds of hedge funds, and Indian-focused and Asian-focused closed-end mutual funds. The Credit Businesses segment manages credit-oriented funds, CLOs, credit-focused separately managed accounts, and publicly registered debt-focused investment companies. The Financial Advisory segment offers financial and strategic advisory, including corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions advice; restructuring and reorganization advisory; and fund placement services for alternative investment funds. Blackstone Group Management L.L.C. operates as the general partner of the company. The Blackstone Group, L.P. was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Monica Gerson]
Crocs (NASDAQ: CROX) shares gained 9.83% to $14.64 in the pre-market after the company reported that it will receive a $200 million investment from Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX).
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