Monday, August 18, 2014

Best Income Companies To Buy Right Now

By Hal M. Bundrick

NEW YORK (MainStreet) �Stock mutual funds are losing investors as fast as Congress is losing popularity. U.S. equity funds saw the largest monthly sell-off for the year so far, with $3.3 billion in redemptions for September, according to Morningstar. Meanwhile, municipal bond funds saw outflows for the seventh month in a row, seeing a $48.1 billion dollar investor exit since March. That outpaces the $44 billion outflow tax-free funds experienced for the entire period from November 2010 through August 2011.

Taxable-bond funds also took it on the chin, with a sell-off for the fourth-straight month. The well-known California bond shop PIMCO saw outflows of $6.5 billion for the month. Its flagship fixed income fund has seen the most rapid investor exits, with investors cashing out $30.2 billion from the PIMCO Total Return fund since June.

10 Best Retail Stocks To Buy For 2015: Vistaprint NV (VPRT)

Vistaprint N.V., incorporated on June 5, 2009, is an online provider of coordinated portfolios of customized marketing products and services to micro businesses worldwide. The Company offers a range of brand identity and promotional products, marketing services and digital solutions. While the Company focuses on micro business marketing products and services, consumers also purchases its products, such as invitations and announcements, greeting cards, photo books and calendars. Customers visiting the Company's Websites can select the type of product they wish to design from its range of available products and services for the business and home and family markets, including paper based, non-paper based, and digital and marketing services. Paper based products include brochures, business cards, data sheets, desk and wall calendars, envelopes, flyers, folded business cards, folded cards, holiday cards, and invitations and announcements. Its non-paper based products include banners, bottle openers, calculators, car door magnets, decals, drink koozies, embroidered apparel, hats, iphone cases, key chains, lawn signs, letter openers and luggage tags. Its digital and marketing services include blogs, custom Facebook pages, design tools and content, e-mail marketing services and logos.

When a product type has been selected, the customer can initiate the design process by using the Company's predefined industry styles and theme categories, by entering one or more keywords in its image search tool, or by uploading the customer's own design. If the customer chooses to do a keyword search, the Company's automated design logic will, in real time, create and display to the customer a variety of product templates containing images related to the customer's keyword. When the customer chooses a particular template for personalization, the Company's user-friendly, browser-based application enables the customer to quickly and easily perform a wide range of design and editing functions on the selected design,! for example, cropping images or entirely replacing images with other images or uploading customer images or logos.

Once customers choose a pre-designed template or upload their own content for a product, they can instantly see what their design looks like on a range of other Vistaprint products and related services, including signage, Websites and e-mail marketing, business identity, direct mail services, apparel and promotional gifts. Customers who need help with their design or ordering process are able to reach the Company's customer service agents through phone, e-mail, and chat. The Company has six customer service facilities: Montego Bay, Jamaica; Berlin, Germany; the Hague, the Netherlands; Tunis, Tunisia; Sydney, Australia; and Mumbai, India. These centers provide phone, email and chat support for customers who speak English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Turkish, Japanese and Hindi. Using the Company's design software applications, combined with voice over Internet protocol telephone transmission technology and call center management tools, its agents and designers provide customer service. Customers purchasing products check out either through a standard e-commerce self-service shopping basket or by providing their order and payment information through telephone to one of the Company's service agents.

The Company's design creation technologies enable customers, by themselves or together with the assistance of the Company's design support staff, to design and create marketing materials from their homes or offices. The Company's document model architecture and technology employs Internet-compatible data structures to define, process and store product designs as a set of separately searchable, combinable and modifiable component elements. The Company's auto-matching design software generates customized product designs in real-time based on key-word searches. VistaStudio is the Company's product ! design an! d editing software suite, which is downloaded to its customer's computer from its server and runs in the customer's browser. This browser-based software provides real-time client-side editing capabilities. A range of layouts, color schemes and fonts are provided and a selection of photographs and illustrations are available for use by customers in product design. Customers can also upload their own images and logos for incorporation into their product designs. The Company's Internet-based, remote, real-time, co-creativity and project management application and database enables customers and the Company's design agents to design a product across the Internet in real-time, while engaging in voice communication.

Albumprinter Downloadable and Online Editors enable the creation of a range of photo products, such as calendars, canvas prints, and greeting cards through an intuitive user interface. These editors allow the Company's customers the choice of creating their personalized products on their own computer or utilizing their preferred browser and enable functionality, such as auto generated layouts, creation of content, and font selection. Features available to the Company's customers include adding personal images, maps, electronic payment processing, downloadable files and contact forms. Pagemodo offers small businesses to create a professional looking custom Facebook page. Pagemodo allows customers to select from a range of templates to create custom tabs for their Fanpage, including welcome tabs, lead capture tabs and video tabs. Pagemodo also offers a template driven cover image designer, which lets customers create cover images for their Facebook pages through a simple click and edit interface.

The Company's pre-production and production technologies process and aggregate customer orders, prepare orders for high-quality production and manage production, addressing and shipment of these orders. DrawDocs is the Company's automated pre-printing press technology that prepares ! customer ! documents received over the Internet for high-resolution printing. The Company's VistaBridge technology allows the Company to store and process. The Company's aggregation software scans these pending jobs and analyzes a range of production characteristics, including quantity, type and format of raw material, color versus black and white, single or double-sided print, delivery date, shipping location, type of production system being used and type of product. For printed products, the VistaBridge software then automatically aggregates orders with similar production characteristics from multiple customers into a single document image that is transferred to either a digital press or to an automated plating system that produces offset printing plates. Viper is the Company's workflow and production management software for tracking and managing its global production facilities on a networked basis. Viper monitors and manages bar-code driven production batch and order management, pick and pack operations, and addressing and shipping of orders.

The Company uses its marketing technologies to generate and display additional products incorporating the customer's initial designs, facilitating the cross-sale of related products and services. VistaMatch Software generates and displays one or more additional customized product designs based upon a customer's existing design. Design elements and customer information are automatically transferred to the additional design.

Automated Cross-Sell and Up-Sell technology permits the Company to show a customer, while the customer is in the process of purchasing a product, marketing offers for one or more additional or related products. Localization/Language Map is the Company's content management system that permits all of its localized Websites, and the changes to those Websites, to be managed by the same software engine. Text and image components of the Company's Web pages are separated, translated and stored in its managed content database.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Anna Prior]

    VistaPrint NV(VPRT) agreed to acquire most of e-commerce printing firm Pixartprinting SRL for roughly EUR127 million ($175 million), expanding the breadth of the online printing-services provider’s range of product offerings.

  • [By Geoff Gannon] f="http://www.gurufocus.com/news/161732/glenn-greenbergs-new-buys-growth-stocks-for-value-investors">your article on Glenn Greenberg.

    I didn't realize that you also look at this type of company.

    Looking through some investor presentations, I�� not really convinced that they can maintain current growth rates of 20%.

    Their production facilities are all based in high cost developed nations.

    Why could this not be copied in Asia?

    I just don't see the moat.

    Current valuation assumes double digit performance for several years, one small dip and the stock dives, no margin of safety here...

    Regards,

    Rijk

    You bring up an interesting point about cost. But I�� not sure how much a small price differential matters to customers in this kind of business. I would have to look into that. Any logistical problems would lose you a customer. Also, that assumes the lowest labor costs lead to the lowest production costs ��I�� not sure that�� true in the printing industry.

    I��e had business cards printed. And screwed up (not by Vistaprint). As long as the price was reasonable, I would��e gone with ��he best�� And I would��e had no way to know who ��he best��was other than the most recognized name. Actually, I remember that being the problem when I needed some business cards, company stationary, etc., printed. I had to visit a couple websites. Look at them. Try to guess which was the best. Or at least decent. It was like getting a plumber or something. I had very little ability to separate the good guys from the bad guys. I wasn�� spending time thinking about price ��many printers had prices that seemed awfully similar to me. Instead I was just overwhelmed how frustratingly identical all the choices were.

    I had no way to make an informed decision.

    I can certainly imagine ways of saving money. But I really doubt labor is a good place to try to find those savings. Small orders to small custome

Best Income Companies To Buy Right Now: Ram Resources Ltd (RMR)

Ram Resources Limited is an Australia-based company. The Company is engaged in exploration of mineral properties in Greenland and Western Australia. The Company�� Motzfeld Project is located in South Greenland, some 24 kilometers from the town of Narsarsuaq and comprises exploration licences 2010/46 and 2011/24. The Company holds 51% interest in the Motzfeldt project. The Romney (EL 2010/46) located in the Lejrelev Valley about 3.5 kilometers to the west of the Aries prospect. The Merino forms a steep-sided ridge at the north-eastern end of this valley, about 2.5 kilometers to the north-north-west of Aries. The Company�� Voskop Prospect is located within Exploration Licence 2011/24 in the Storeelv Valley about 7 kilometers to the northwest of the Company�� Aries target. The Drysdale Prospect is located on top of a broad ridge about 7.5 kilometers southeast of Aries and at an elevation of about 1,600 meter. Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Chris DeMuth Jr.]

    To use a recent REIT example, take CommonWealth REIT. This is a large well established REIT that is valued in the market with one of the lowest multiples of FFO in the industry. The reason the company trades at a multiple roughly half its competitors, in my opinion, is the poorly aligned management incentive structure. The management of CommonWealth is contracted to an external management firm, Reit Management Research (RMR). Many of the trustees of CommonWeath are owners of RMR and serve on both boards. RMR is primarily compensated by growing CWH's assets which are under RMR's management, not on stock price, FFO, or anything else that is closely aligned to generating shareholder returns. This has the perverse effect of motivating them to issue lots of equity and buy lots of buildings irrespective of the value add to CommonWealth shareholders. Neither the management company nor its employees have a significant amount of their income based on the performance of CommonWealth's stock price. This has resulted in an activist, Corvex Capital, buying a significant position in the company and taking action to replace the board and the management team. The proxy advisory firm, ISS, has sided with the activist and recommended that shareholders vote out the current trustees. ISS notes, "Between 2007-2012 …while the CommonWealth management team increased assets by 198% of period-ending market cap - driving a significant increase in fees payable to management - Commonwealth's share price - the measure of value appreciation for shareholders - fell by 68%." This is the poster child of misaligned management incentives.

Best Income Companies To Buy Right Now: UBIC Inc (UBIC)

UBIC, Inc. is a provider of e-discovery and digital forensic services for Asia and the world. The Company works with electronically stored information composed in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) languages and utilizes that expertise for clients involved in cross-border litigation, corporate investigations, intellectual property disputes and more. The Company's Lit i View platform is moving the industry from fact discovery to future discovery by allowing clients to analyze e-mail messages and digital communications found in big data to reveal patterns in human thought and behavior. Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Lisa Levin]

    UBIC (NASDAQ: UBIC) shares fell 6.36% to touch a new 52-week low of $5.30. UBIC's trailing-twelve-month revenue is $58.74 million.

    Posted-In: 52-Week LowsNews Movers & Shakers Intraday Update Markets

Best Income Companies To Buy Right Now: Ishares Msci Korea (EWY)

iShares MSCI South Korea Index Fund (the Fund) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of publicly traded securities in the aggregate in the South Korean market. The Fund's performance is measured by the MSCI Korea Index (the Index).

The Fund invests in a representative sample of securities in the Index, which has a similar investment profile as the Index. iShares MSCI South Korea Index Fund's investment advisor is Barclays Global Fund Advisors.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Jeff Reeves]

    Of course, Samsung�� massive presence has weighed on the region lately. In the last 12 months, the iShares MSCI South Korea Index Fund (EWY) has declined about 4%, pretty much the same performance as Samsung�� stock.

Best Income Companies To Buy Right Now: General Growth Properties Inc (GGC)

General Growth Properties, Inc. (GGP), incorporated on July 1, 2010, is a real estate investment trust (REIT). The Company owns or with joint venture partners 144 regional malls (126 domestic and 18 in Brazil) consists of approximately 135 million square feet. The Company is engaged in ownership, operation, management and selective re-development of its Consolidated Properties and Unconsolidated Properties, which are primarily regional malls.

As of December 31, 2012, the Company's segment was consists of 126 regional malls in the United States and 18 malls in Brazil, eight strip centers totaling 1.6 million square feet, primarily in the Western region of the United States, as well as seven stand-alone office buildings totaling 0.9 million square feet, concentrated in Columbia, Maryland. The Company also own interests in regional malls in Brazil.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Holly LaFon]

    His largest new buys in the first quarter are: Penn Virginia Group Holdings LP (PVG), Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN), Methanex Corp. (MEOH), Solutia Inc. (SOA) and Georgia Gulf (GGC). Of his top eight stocks, five are from the chemicals industry.

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