WireImage/Getty Images From a poorly planned food drive to "mislabeled" bibles to a run on recliners, here's a rundown of the week's best and worst moves in the business world. La-Z-Boy (LZB) -- Winner It's not easy to get pumped about a maker of reclining furniture, but that's just what happened this week when La-Z-Boy posted better than expected quarterly results. Sales rose 14 percent for the quarter, and the furniture maker's profit of $0.31 a share was well ahead of what Wall Street was forecasting. La-Z-Boy also sweetened its own story by boosting its quarterly dividend by 50 percent. Something tells me that bigger dividends sound better to folks than the comfy chair. Walmart (WMT) -- Loser A Walmart store in Ohio made headlines for all the wrong reasons when it set up a food drive to benefit its own impoverished employees. Walmart is already taking plenty of heat for its low wages, even though it's not materially different than what many retailers pay. It never gets the accolades for making budgets last longer by offering low prices. However, this time the knocks are warranted. Setting up tables in the employees' area for sales associates and cashiers to donate food items for their poor coworkers was never going to end well. Walmart initially played it up as a positive, suggesting that it was collecting for Walmart employees whose spouses are out of work. However, the more straightforward interpretation is that Walmart doesn't pay a living wage sufficient to provide for a family, and that's the one that went viral. SodaStream (SODA) -- Winner Making soda at home just got easier with SodaStream introducing SodaStream Caps. Simply pressing a SodaStream Caps capsule down into a fizzed up SodaStream bottle provides enough syrup for the entire liter. It's a slightly more convenient process than having to pour out the syrup from a bottle's measuring cap. SodaStream Caps are now being sold exclusively through Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), though other retailers will begin stocking the portion packs starting next year. Starting at $5 for a eight capsule cola or diet cola pack, it's not cheaper than the existing bottles, but it should be enough to win over those who haven't been as neat with their syrup pours in the past. Costco (COST) -- Loser You rarely see this warehouse club giant mess up, but it did this week. A pastor visiting a Costco in California was surprised to see a bible labeled as "fiction" in the store's book department. His post on Twitter went viral. Was this an agnostic employee with a mean streak and a label gun? No. Costco laid the blame on a distributor for making the mistake on a small number of bibles. It naturally relabeled the bibles, but it was still embarrassing for a company that has typically earned nothing but praise for its high wages and its decision to remain closed on Thanksgiving. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) -- Winner The death of Green Mountain's K-Cups at the hands of rival private-label coffee pods appears to have been greatly exaggerated. Shares of the company behind the Keurig single-serve coffee brewers rose after posting blowout quarterly results. Green Mountain saw revenue as well as sales of its K-Cups and brewers all climb at double-digit percentage rates. Green Mountain did offer a gloomy outlook for its holiday quarter, but investors brushed that aside after the company initiated a quarterly dividend and authorized an additional $1 billion share buyback plan. Green Mountain will still need to tackle its slowdown in the current quarter, but at least it's returning money to its shareholders to reward their patience.
5 Best Low Price Stocks To Watch For 2014: BroadVision Inc.(BVSN)
BroadVision, Inc. develops, markets, and supports enterprise portal applications. The company?s applications enable companies to unify their e-business infrastructure and conduct interactions and transactions with employees, partners, and customers through a personalized self-service model. Its solutions include business agility suite, a portal that provides personalized views of information and processes from diverse internal, external, and legacy sources; commerce agility suite, an e-commerce system for transacting business on the Web, ranging from lead generation, navigation, category management, incentive, shopping cart, and order execution to customer care; Clearvale, an enterprise social network solution, which organizes multiple social networks into ecosystems and manages them; Clear, an SaaS-based collaborative human resources management system solution that facilitates collaboration by members of customers organization in the phases of the HR management life cycl e; and QuickSilver, a publishing system for various documents. The company also provides various services, such as portal services for organizing and presenting information; commerce services for transacting business on the Web; process services for transforming people-intensive processes and collaborations into Web-based self-service applications; content services for managing Web content; staging services for moving content from multiple development environments to production environment; eMerchandising for creating, managing, implementing, tracking, and analyzing sales discounts and incentives; and search for full-text and field searching of online content and referenced external files with relevance ranking. It has operation in the North and South America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.
5 Best Low Price Stocks To Watch For 2014: Discovery Communications Inc(DISCA)
Discovery Communications, Inc. operates as a non fiction media and entertainment company worldwide. The company provides original and purchased programming across various distribution platforms. Its content covers science, exploration, survival, natural history, sustainability of the environment, technology, docu-series, anthropology, paleontology, history, space, archaeology, health and wellness, engineering, adventure, lifestyles, forensics, civilization, and current events. The company owns and operates nine national television networks in the United States, including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, Military Channel, Planet Green, Discovery Fit & Health, and Velocity. Discovery Communications also has interests in Oprah Winfrey Network, a pay-television network and Web site; The Hub that features original programming, game shows, and live-action series and specials; and 3net, a three-dimensional network. In addition, it o ffers network branded Web sites, and mobile and video-on-demand services; and distributes various national and pan-regional television networks. Further, the company develops and sells curriculum-based products and services to public and private K-12 schools, such as access to an online VOD service that includes curriculum-based tools, professional development services, and student assessment and publication of hardcopy curriculum-based content; and postproduction audio services to motion picture studios, independent producers, broadcast networks, cable channels, advertising agencies, and interactive producers. As of December 31, 2011, it operated approximately 150 distribution feeds in 40 languages. The company is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jonas Elmerraji]
If the market's had a great year in 2013, Discovery Communications (DISCA) has managed to do one better. Shares of the $30 billion TV broadcaster have rallied almost 32% year-to-date, stomping the performance of the S&P 500 by a wide margin.
Still, investors hate this stock right now. With a short interest ratio of 10.7, it would take short sellers more than two weeks of buying at current volume levels to cover their positions.
Discovery owns a handful of international cable TV channels, including the namesake Discovery Channel, TLC, Science Channel and Animal Planet, and positions in properties such as Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network, launched in 2011. Discovery's niche positioning gives it some big benefits -- the firm's channels focus on topics such as science, technology and history, and they're able to sell more targeted advertising as a result. That's helped push the firm's net margins far above those of more conventional network broadcasters.
Discovery's channels are only part of the story. Content is king in the broadcast business, and so Discovery's 100,000 hour video library provides the firm with an extremely valuable asset -- especially now that streaming video firms such as Amazon.com (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX) are falling all over themselves to license content.
DISCA has some tailwinds at its back right now, and its hefty short interest gives it the potential to pop this summer.
Top 5 Value Stocks To Watch Right Now: Zongshen Pem Pwr Systems Inc(ZPP.TO)
Zongshen PEM Power Systems Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in manufacturing and selling environmentally friendly gas motorbikes, electric motorcycles, electric bicycles, and other e-vehicles and parts. The company sells its products through dealers primarily in China, as well as in other regions, including Africa, South America, and Asia. The company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Zongshen PEM Power Systems Inc. is a subsidiary of Zongshen Industrial Group Co. Ltd.
5 Best Low Price Stocks To Watch For 2014: Magindustries Corp (MAA.TO)
MagIndustries Corp., together with its subsidiaries, focuses on the exploration and development of potash assets in the Republic of Congo. Its principal project includes the Mengo project that holds a mining license for a 136 km2 area with 33.2 million tonnes of proven and probable reserves of potash located to east of the Atlantic port city of Pointe-Noire, the Republic of Congo. The company also focuses on the construction and commissioning of a potash plant located to the east of the Atlantic port city of Pointe-Noire, the Republic of Congo to produce primarily agricultural-grade potash fertilizers for South American, South African, and European markets. In addition, it owns and operates a 68,000 hectare eucalyptus forestry plantation in Pointe-Noire, the Republic of Congo, which produces and sells wood chips to customers in the pulp and paper, and fiberboard industry in the European market; and evaluating the development of a Kouilou magnesium plant near Pointe-Noire i n the Republic of Congo located adjacent to the potash plant. The company was formerly known as Magnesium Alloy Corporation and changed its name to MagIndustries Corp. in January 2005. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. As of July 22, 2011, MagIndustries Corp. operates as a subsidiary of Evergreen Industries Holding Group Co., Ltd.
5 Best Low Price Stocks To Watch For 2014: Beghelli Spa(BE.MI)
Beghelli S.p.A engages in the production and sale of emergency lighting equipment in the fields of energy savings. The company also offers electronic domestic, industrial, and urban safety and security systems. In addition, it provides general lighting equipment; home automation systems; and tele assistance, and urban safety and security solutions. The company was founded in 1982 and is based in Monteveglio, Italy.
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