A federal judge in San Francisco has scheduled arguments for April 25 in a class-action case from a group owners of cars that are part of GM's vehicle recall. But on Friday, GM asked the judge to delay any ruling until it can get a bankruptcy judge in New York to reaffirm the liability protection granted to it in 2009.
The liability shield could void the class-action lawsuit.
Five years ago, GM went through a bankruptcy reorganization that U.S. taxpayers financed. President Barack Obama's auto task force, which orchestrated the process, offered the emerging company immunity from product liability claims arising before it exited bankruptcy.
Top Healthcare Technology Companies To Watch For 2015: Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc.(IRWD)
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. discovers, develops, and commercializes medicines targeting therapeutic needs. The company is developing Linaclotide, a first-in-class compound that is in Phase III clinical trials for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome with constipation, chronic constipation, and other lower gastrointestinal conditions. It also focuses on the research and development of early stage product candidates and preclinical research in various therapeutic areas, including gastrointestinal disease, pain and inflammation, respiratory disease, and cardiovascular disease. The company has a collaboration agreement with Forest Laboratories, Inc. to jointly develop and commercialize linaclotide in North America; a license agreement with Almirall, S.A. to develop and commercialize linaclotide in Europe; and a license agreement with Astellas Pharma Inc. that provides Astellas Pharma with the right to develop and commercialize linaclotide in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It serves patients, payors, and healthcare providers. The company was formerly known as Microbia, Inc. and changed its name to Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in April 2008. Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Keith Speights]
Flood of expenses
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IRWD ) shares fell 12% this week, after the company reported first-quarter results. A big part of the drugmaker's problems stemmed from soaring sales and administrative costs. - [By gurujx]
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IRWD) Reached the 3-year Low of $10.02
The prices of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IRWD) shares have declined to close to the 3-year low of $10.02, which is 51.0% off the 3-year high of $19.67.
- [By Ben Levisohn]
And it’s not just Gilead that Meacham is feeling good about. He’s also optimistic about Biogen Idec (BIIB), Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (IRWD) and Alexion Pharmaceiticals (ALXN):
Top Rising Stocks To Own For 2014: Geospace Technologies Corp (GEOS)
Geospace Technologies Corporation, formerly OYO Geospace Corporation, incorporated on September 13, 1997, designs and manufactures instruments and equipment used in the acquisition and processing of seismic data, as well as in the characterization and monitoring of producing oil and gas reservoirs. The Company also manufactures and distributes thermal imaging equipment and dry thermal film products to a variety of markets including the screenprint, point of sale, signage and textile markets. As of September 30, 2011, OYO Corporation U.S.A. (OYO USA) owned approximately 20.3% of the Company�� common stock. The Company operates in two segments: Seismic and Thermal Solutions. The seismic segment of its business accounts for the majority of its sales. Its thermal solutions product technologies were developed for seismic data processing applications.
Seismic Products
Geoscientists use seismic data primarily in connection with the exploration, development and production of oil and gas reserves to map hydrocarbon bearing formations and the geologic structures that surround them. The Company provides many of the components of seismic data recording systems, including data acquisition systems, geophones, hydrophones, multi-component sensors, seismic leader wire, geophone strings, connectors, seismic telemetry cables and other seismic related products. Its marine seismic products help steer streamers while being towed and help recover streamers if they become disconnected from the vessel.
The Company has developed permanently installed high-definition reservoir characterization products for ocean-bottom applications in producing oil and gas fields. It also produces a retrievable version of this ocean-bottom system for use on fields where permanently installed systems are not appropriate or economical. Seismic surveys repeated over selected time intervals show dynamic changes within the reservoir and can be used to monitor the effects of production. In addition, it produc! es seismic borehole acquisition systems which employ a fiber optic augmented wireline capable of high data transmission rates. These systems are used for several reservoir characterization applications, including an application pioneered by it allowing operators and service companies to monitor and measure the results of fracturing operations.
The Company designs and manufactures power and communication transmission cable products for offshore applications and market these products to the offshore oil and gas and offshore construction industries. These products include a variety of specialized cables, primarily used in deepwater applications, such as remotely operated vehicle (ROV) tethers, umbilicals and electrical control cables. These products also include specially designed and manufactured cables, including armored cables, engineered to withstand harsh offshore operating environments. In addition, it designs and manufactures industrial sensors for the vibration monitoring, security and earthquake detection markets. The Company also design and manufacture other specialty cable and connector products, such as those used in connection with global positioning products and water meter applications.
Its seismic product lines consists of land and marine nodal seismic data acquisition systems, high-definition reservoir characterization products and services, geophones and hydrophones, including multi-component geophones and hydrophones, seismic leader wire, geophone string and acquisition system connectors, seismic telemetry cables, marine seismic cable retrieval and steering devices and specialized data acquisition systems targeted at conventional and niche markets.
The Company�� high-definition reservoir characterization products include the HDSeis product line and a suite of borehole and reservoir characterization products and services. Its HDSeis System is a high-definition seismic data acquisition system with architecture that allows it to be configured as a bo! rehole se! ismic system or as a subsurface system for both land and marine reservoir-monitoring projects. Its multi-component seismic product developments include an omni-directional geophone for use in reservoir monitoring, a compact marine three-component or four-component gimbaled sensor and special-purpose connectors, connector arrays and cases. Its products used in marine seismic data acquisition include its marine seismic streamer retrieval devices (SRDs). Its SRDs, which are attached to the streamer cables, contain air bags which are designed to inflate automatically at a given depth, bringing the severed streamer cables to the surface. It also produces seismic streamer steering devices, or birds, which are finlike devices that attach to the streamer cable. These birds help maintain the streamer cable at a certain desired depth as it is being towed through the water.
The Company competes with CGGVeritas, ION Geophysical, INOVA, Amphenol Corporation, Fairfield Industries, Petroleum Geo-Services ASA, Avalon, Mitcham Industries, Inc. and Seismic Equipment Solutions.
Thermal Solutions Products
The Company thermal printers include both thermal imagesetters for graphics applications and thermal plotters for seismic applications. In addition, its thermal solutions products include direct-to-screen systems, thermal printheads, dry thermal film, thermal transfer ribbons and other thermal media. Its thermal imaging solutions produce images ranging in size from 12 to 54 inches wide and in resolution from 400 to 1,200 dots per inch. It markets its thermal imaging solutions to a variety of industries, including the screen printing, point-of-sale, signage, flexographic and textile markets. It also distributes private label dry thermal media for use in its thermal printers and direct-to-screen systems. In addition, the Company is engaged in efforts to develop new lines of dry thermal film and ribbon in order to improve the image quality of its media for use with printheads.
The! Company thermal solutions products include thermal imagesetters for graphics applications and thermal plotters for seismic applications. In addition, its thermal solution products include thermal printheads and thermal media products. It markets these products to a variety of industries, including the screen print, point of sale, signage and textile markets. It also sells these products to seismic customers.
The Company competes with KIWO USA, Inc., Colour Scanned Technology and iSys Group.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Seth Jayson]
Geospace Technologies (Nasdaq: GEOS ) reported earnings on May 2. Here are the numbers you need to know.
The 10-second takeaway
For the quarter ended March 31 (Q2), Geospace Technologies whiffed on revenues and whiffed on earnings per share.
Top Rising Stocks To Own For 2014: Ark Restaurants Corp. (ARKR)
Ark Restaurants Corp., through its subsidiaries, engages in the ownership and operation of restaurants and bars, fast food concepts, and catering operations. As of October 2, 2010, it owned and operated 22 restaurants and bars, including 9 facilities located in New York City; 4 in Washington, D.C.; 5 in Las Vegas, Nevada; 2 in Atlantic City, New Jersey; 1 at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut; and 1 in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as had 29 fast food concepts and catering operations. The company was founded in 1983 and is based in New York, New York.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Bram de Haas]
Ark Restaurants Corp (ARKR) owns and operates 19 restaurants and bars, 22 fast food concepts and catering operations in the USA. This is a short article outlining why they are an interesting company to put on the buy list. It needs to be said, this is not a chain that can roll out their concept or brand nationwide and enjoy terrific growth of their franchise. They chose not to build up brands and instead operate under trade names that suit the unique locations they prefer. The reason that I want to highlight this small company is that in recent years they have faced numerous challenges and adversity (aside from those posed by the general economy) and it's possible they have dealt with the majority, and free cash flow will enjoy a significant uptick in the next two years.
- [By Geoff Gannon] ght them - and even now - I think their return on buyback would be high and I'd be in favor of it. However, the stocks are illiquid and their free cash flow relative to the dollar value of freely traded shares is not high. As a result, I'm always in favor of RSKIA and ARKR buying back stock. But, I understand it's very hard for them to do in practice unless there is a meaningful holder who signals he wants out of the stock.
My approach to buybacks is pretty simple. One, I prefer them. Two, I look at the share count history over the last 10 to 20 years as my guide to what the company might do in the future - I want a pattern of predictable behavior. Generally, that means a continuously shrinking share count that shrinks in bull markets and bear markets, panics and recessions and booms and busts and so on. Three, if I'm a buyer of the stock - then the company should be a buyer of its own stock. No questions asked on that one. If the stock is good enough for me to buy it's clearly good enough for the company to buy. Finally, I look for the return on buyback. I tend to focus on the earning power the company is buying relative to the net cash it is spending. If a company has cash on its balance sheet, the amount of net cash consumed by a buyback will be less than it appears because I will end up with a greater percentage ownership of the resulting balance sheet as well as the income statement.
I want the return on buyback to always be at least 10%. As a rule, the average company will only get returns on its buybacks of 10% or higher if it pays less than 15 times normal earnings. In special cases - fast growing companies, companies where free cash flow vastly exceeds reported income, etc. - it is possible that buybacks above 15 times earnings will return more than 10%. It almost never makes sense for a company to buy back stock at over 25 times earnings. So, for most companies, under 15 times earnings is the green zone for buybacks - 15 to 25 times earnings is
Top Rising Stocks To Own For 2014: PDF Solutions Inc.(PDFS)
PDF Solutions, Inc. provides infrastructure technologies and services for the design and manufacture of integrated circuits (IC) in Asia, the United States, and Europe. It offers manufacturing process solutions that include process research and development, and process integration and yield ramp; volume manufacturing solutions; and design-for-manufacturability (DFM) solutions, such as logic DFM, circuit level DFM, memory DFM, and pdBRIX Physical IP solutions. The company also offers characterization vehicle (CV) infrastructure, which includes CV test chips, pdCV analysis software, and pdFasTest electrical wafer test system; Yield Ramp Simulator software that analyzes an IC design to compute its systematic and random yield loss; and Circuit Surfer software, which estimates the parametric performance yield and manufacturability of analog/mixed-signal/RF blocks. In addition, it provides pdBRIX platform, which includes software for identifying and developing a set of physical IP building blocks that are tailored to a given manufacturing process and target product application; dataPOWER YMS platform that collects yield data, loads, and stores it in an integrated database and allows product engineers to identify and analyze production yield issues; FDC software, which provides fault detection and classification capabilities to identify sources of process variations and manufacturing excursions by monitoring equipment parameters; and YA-FDC service and software platform that allows online modeling to create real-time virtual measurements of final product attributes during processing. PDF Solutions sells its technologies and services through direct sales force, sales representatives, and strategic alliances to integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor design companies, and foundries in the microprocessors, memory, graphics, image sensor solutions, and communications segments. The company was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in San Jo se, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Roberto Pedone]
PDF Solutions (PDFS) provides infrastructure technologies and services to improve yield and optimize performance of integrated circuits. This stock closed up 2.6% at $21.51 in Friday's trading session.
Friday's Volume: 543,000
Three-Month Average Volume: 112,159
Volume % Change: 393%From a technical perspective, PDFS trended up here right above some near-term support at $20.50 and into new 52-week-high territory with above-average volume. This stock has been uptrending strong for the last three months, with shares moving higher from its low of $14.95 to its intraday high on Friday of $21.64. During that move, shares of PDFS have been consistently making mostly higher lows and higher highs, which is bullish technical price action. That move has also been accompanies by heavy upside volume flows since mid-July.
Traders should now look for long-biased trades in PDFS as long as it's trending above some near-term support at $20.50 or above its 50-day at $19.06 and then once it sustains a move or close above Friday's high of $21.64 with volume that's near or above 112,159 shares. If we get that move soon, then PDFS will set up to enter new 52-week-high territory, which is bullish technical price action. Some possible upside targets off that breakout are $25 to $28.
Top Rising Stocks To Own For 2014: Lucara Diamond Corp (LUCRF.PK)
Lucara Diamond Corp. (Lucara) is a diamond development company focused in Africa. The business of Lucara consists of the acquisition, exploration and development of diamond properties. The principal assets of Lucara and the focus of Lucara�� development and exploration activities are its interest in mining, exploration and prospecting diamond licenses in Lesotho, Botswana and Namibia. The Company�� project Mothae Diamond Project is located in northeast Lesotho. In May 2010, it commenced test mining in Mothae Diamond Project-Lesotho. Mothae Diamonds (PTY) Ltd (Mothae Diamonds), an indirect 75% owned subsidiary of the Company, holds a 100% interest in the Mothae project. As of March 23, 2011, a total of 175,000 dry tons had been processed from the C domain, producing 5,484 carats at an average grade of 3.13 carats per hundred tons. In December 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of African Diamonds PLC, upon which Lucara indirectly owns 100% of the AK6 Diamond Project. Advisors' Opinion:- [By John Leonard]
Lucara Diamond (LUCRF.PK) is still being valued as a riskier exploration stage miner rather than a profitable and growing producer. The current "backward looking" valuation fails to reflect the recent and significant operational transition.
Top Rising Stocks To Own For 2014: GSI Group Inc.(GSIG)
GSI Group Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and sells laser-based solutions, laser scanning devices, and precision motion and optical control technologies worldwide. The company?s Laser Products segment provides lasers and laser-based systems for photonics-based applications, such as cutting, welding, marking, engraving, micro-machining, and scientific research. Its Precision Motion and Technologies segment designs, manufactures, and markets air bearing spindles, encoders, thermal printers, laser scanning devices, and light and color measurement systems to original equipment manufacturers. The company?s Semiconductor Systems segment offers laser based production systems for semiconductor, microelectronics, and electronics manufacturing. This segment?s products comprise WaferRepair for dynamic random access memory, flash memory chips, and LCDs; WaferMark for silicon suppliers and integrated circuit factories; and WaferTrim and Circuit Trim for analog and mixed signal sensor and chip resistor devices, as well as for resistor devices. The company sells its products primarily through direct sales force, resellers, distributors, and system integrators. It serves industrial, electronics, automotive, medical, packaging, aerospace, scientific, semiconductor, lighting, military, and motion picture markets. The company was formerly known as GSI Lumonics Inc. and changed its name to GSI Group Inc. in 2005. GSI Group Inc. was founded in 1970 and is based in Bedford, Massachusetts.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Eric Volkman]
Electro Scientific Industries (NASDAQ: ESIO ) has a new division under its corporate wing. The company has inked a definitive agreement to purchase the semiconductor systems unit of GSI Group (NASDAQ: GSIG ) . The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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