CHICAGO, Dec. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Zacks Equity Research highlights Cross Country Healthcare (Nasdaq:CCRN-Free Report)as the Bull of the Day and Macquarie Infrastructure Company (NYSE:MIC-Free Report) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis onAmedisys Inc. (Nasdaq:AMED-Free Report), TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. (Nasdaq:TQNT-Free Report) and CTPartners Executive Search Inc. (AMEX:CTP-Free Report).
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:
With the Dow breaking on through 18,000 it's easy to be bullish on the market. The American consumer is back, oil prices are cheap, and we're looking forward to a year full of winners for 2015. With today's Bull of the Day I wanted to find a stock that can benefit from a continued rebound in the US. As unemployment continues to creep lower and higher paying jobs start popping up the country is looking forward to good times ahead. I wanted to find us a stock in an industry that would benefit from this boom.
Today's pick is in the staffing industry that currently sits in the Top 5% of our Zacks Industry Rank. Cross Country Healthcare (Nasdaq:CCRN-Free Report)is a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) with a great chart that's breaking out to the upside. CCRN is a leader in healthcare staffing with a primary focus on providing nurse and allied and physician staffing services to the healthcare market.
Three analyst estimate revisions to the upside for the current quarter and next year are a big reason why the stock is a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). The bullish adjustments have pushed consensus for the current quarter up from 3 cents to 5 cents and for the next year up from 28 cents to 31 cents.
Adding to the revisions is the fact that the company has surprised to the upside the last two quarters. Q2 numbers saw a 2 cent beat with the company turning a 1 cent profit while Q3 beat by 5 cents at 7 cents per share. The company reports Q4 earnings on March 16th, 2015.
After reaching a fresh 52-week high of $11.54 on January 28, 2014, CCRN lost momentum and the stock retreated. The first close below the 25x5 happened on February 5th as the stock also broke $10. From there a small consolidation was followed by a disastrous sell-off on heavy volume March 6th. Over 2 million shares traded hands on what turned out to be the busiest day of the year for the stock as is shed over 20% on the session.
For today's Bear of the Day I wanted to do something different. Rather than find a company with a poor Zacks Rank that's been beaten down, I thought I would experiment a bit. Today I ran a screen with the same criteria I use to find great momentum stocks, only I flipped it on its head a bit. While I kept the technical parts of the screen the same, I flipped the other parts on the head. The goal of this is to find a stock that has seen its price has run up while estimates have come down. I want a stock within earshot of a fresh 52-week high that is also a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) and perhaps may be running out of gas. I'm not here to tell you it's time to short, I'm here to warn you just in case you're long and don't have your risk parameters in place.
Today's Bear of the Day is Macquarie Infrastructure Company (NYSE:MIC-Free Report). Macquarie is a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) that owns, operates, and invests in a diversified group of infrastructure businesses in the United States. This infrastructure includes one of the largest bulk liquid terminals businesses, an airport service business, a gas processing and distribution business, and a portfolio of contracted power and energy facilities.
MIC's airport services business, Atlantic Aviation, provides fuel and fuel-related services, as well as terminal and hangar operations to businesses and individuals in the private jet segment of general non-commercial aviation. Their bulk liquid terminals business is the largest independent bulk liquid business the US. Operating under International-Matex Tank Terminals, the company owns and operates 12 terminals and provides storage and logistics services including more than 45 million barrels of liquid petroleum, chemical and agricultural product tankage. Through Hawai'iGAS the company operates the only utility pipeline gas distribution on the Hawaiian Islands while their contracted power and energy segment invests in solar and wind facilities in the US Southwest.
With businesses like that, it's easy to see why the market is bullish. However, analysts have had a different opinion of the company. For the current quarter, analysts have dropped estimates from 69 cents all the way down to 32 cents over the last 60 days. For next year's numbers, three analysts have slashed estimates from $2.52 all the way down to $2.17.
The estimate revisions to the downside come on the heels of two very disappointing quarterly earnings reports. Q2 2014 earnings came in at 19 cents versus consensus expectations for 28 cents. Q3 the disappointment deepened with a 50 cent loss coming for the company in the face of expectations for a 45 cent gain.
Additional content:
Top 3 Industries Ready to Take Off in 2015
Standing on the threshold of 2015, if you have appetite for 'big game' stocks in a volatile market, you ought to first screen the broader sector for the prized catches.
Various studies and historical data have proved beyond doubt that average stocks that belong to top-performing industries have greater probability to outperform the so-called 'blue-chips' in a relatively poor-performing industry. And what best way to narrow down your search than to resort to some expert advice – in this case the Zacks Industry Rank.
Zacks Industry Rank
An industry is an assortment of stocks in a similar business. The Zacks Industry Rank is obtained by first calculating the average Zacks Rank for all the stocks within that industry and then assigning an ordinal rank to it. For example, an industry with an average Zacks Rank of 1.4 is better than an industry with an average Zacks Rank of 2.2. So the industry with the better average Zacks Rank would get a better Zacks Industry Rank.
Within the Zacks Industry classification, we have divided the business world into 16 sectors comprising 60 industries (at the medium or M-level) and 260 plus industries at the expanded or X-level. We rank all 260 plus X-level industries in the 16 sectors based on the earnings outlook for the constituent companies in each industry.
Short-Listing 3 Industries with Zacks Industry Rank
Leveraging on the indigenous Zacks methodology, we have shortlisted three broader industries that consist of a few X-level industries having a strong Zacks Industry Rank. These suggest their inherent sector strengths and potential to outperform in the long term. These include the Medical Devices, Semiconductor and Staffing.
Medical Devices are an integral part of the healthcare sector. The industry boasts of the most sophisticated technology products such as pacemakers, imaging instruments, dialysis machines and implants along with mundane items like thermometers and gloves.
The U.S. accounts for the lion's share of the Medical Devices industry. However, grappling challenges and gradual slowdown in mature markets due to factors like the controversial 2.3% medical device excise tax have forced the MedTech firms to focus on other emerging economies. These include countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) as well as Turkey, Mexico, Malaysia, South Africa, South Korea and the Czech Republic.
These markets have proved to be lucrative for global medical device players with favorable demographics such as an aging population, rising income, increasing health awareness with government focus on healthcare infrastructure and expansion of the medical insurance coverage.
As the industry braces for a 5% CAGR from 2013-2020 with global sales reaching $514 billion by 2020, expansion in emerging markets represents one of the best potential avenues for growth going into 2015 and beyond.
As a driver, enabler and indicator of the technological prowess of an economy, the Semiconductor industry forms the foundation for virtually all other technology-based industries of a country. It is also likely to play a key role for The Internet of Things (IoT) market, which connects uniquely identifiable endpoints or 'things' to help them communicate without human interaction using IP connectivity.
The IoT market is expected to be one of the largest growth opportunities for the semiconductor industry over the next several years. According to data by research agency International Data Corporation, the global IoT market is likely to expand manifold to $7.1 trillion by 2020, as more and more people develop an affinity for full-time connectivity. The worldwide IoT installed base is expected to have a CAGR of 17.5% from 2013 to 2020 with wide proliferation across the full breadth of the IoT ecosystem.
The year-to-date return of the 'Philadelphia Semiconductor Index - SOX,' which is a price-weighted index composed of 18 U.S. semiconductor companies primarily involved in the design, distribution, manufacture, and sale of semiconductors, currently stands at 30.21%. Data from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics further portray a healthy year-over-year growth for the global semiconductor market at 9% to $333 billion in 2014 and 3.4% in 2015 to $345 billion.
The Staffing industry is one of the vital constituents of the Business Services sector that reported year-over-year earnings growth of 9.7%, 10.0% and 11.3% in the first three quarters of 2014, which was much higher than the respective performances of the S&P 500 index at 1.5%, 8.3% and 6.9%.
Robust performance by the Staffing industry contributed significantly to the job growth of the country as the unemployment rate and the numbers of unemployed persons in 2014 were down by 1.2 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively.
Latest employment data shows that total non-farm payroll employment rose by 321,000 in November, compared with an average monthly gain of 224,000 over the prior 12 months. The Business Services sector leads the pack for the highest job additions with 86,000 jobs added in November, compared with an average gain of 57,000 per month over the prior 12 month-period.
Latest data from the ASA Staffing Index that tracks weekly changes in temporary and contract employment shows that staffing jobs for the week ended Dec 7, 2014 increased 4.95% over the prior week – the highest value since the index's inception in Jun 2006. The Staffing industry looks set to continue this growth momentum in 2015 as well.
3 Top Picks from These Industries
Amid such strong industry fundamentals, we provide you a handful of top-performing stocks based on solid individual Zacks Rank, year-to-date share price return and healthy earnings growth expectation. Let's take a closer look at these companies that appear to be well positioned to benefit from the solid sector dynamics.
Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq:AMED-Free Report): Within the broader healthcare industry, this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock is a leading healthcare at home service provider, delivering personalized home health and hospice care to over 360,000 patients each year.
With a market cap of $931.64 million, Amedisys has modest long-term earnings growth expectation of 9.0%. Generating a solid year-to-date return of 97.9%, Amedisys belongs to the Medical Outpatient/Home Care Industry that carries a Zacks Industry Rank #12 (top 5% of Zacks Ranked industries).
TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. (Nasdaq:TQNT-Free Report): Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Hillsboro, OR, this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of semiconductor communication integrated circuits (ICs).
TriQuint belongs to the Semiconductor-Communications Industry that carries a Zacks Industry Rank #16 (top 7% of Zacks Ranked industries). This $4.9-billion-market-cap-holding company has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 13.3%. TriQuint has an astounding share price return of 231.5% so far this year.
CTPartners Executive Search Inc. (AMEX:CTP-Free Report): Based in New York, this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock offers advisory and executive recruiting services to global clients across diversified industries.
With a market cap of $111.96 million, CTPartners has a healthy long-term earnings growth expectation of 12.0%. Generating a stellar year-to-date return of 169.6%, CTPartners surely leads the pack of the top-performing Staffing stocks in the year. Furthermore, it belongs to the Staffing Industry that carries a Zacks Industry Rank #14 (top 6% of Zacks Ranked industries).
Moving Forward
Although past performances do not guarantee similar results in the ensuing year, these stocks (by virtue of favorable Zacks Industry Ranks) are expected to continue their growth momentum in 2015. You'd likely do better to own such tried-and-tested stocks than bet on non-performers.
Be among the first to see the Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2015, a portfolio that consists of our Best-of-the-Best fundamentally sound long-term picks designed to perform in any type of market. Get in before the stocks are released on January 2 by clicking here.
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