Hot Railroad Companies To Watch In Right Now

Compounding a lousy earnings report, the departure of the founders of IGT’s social gaming unit Double Down spelled doom for the stock Friday,

Shares of International Game Technology (IGT) sank nearly 15% Friday to $15.04, the second worst performance among companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 behind railroad Kansas City Southern (KSU). International Game Technology reported earnings Thursday that missed earnings estimates and said its full-year earnings would be at the bottom of its forecasted range.

Then IGT, which produces casino game and wagering equipment and technology,�confirmed the departure of the founders of Double Down, which IGT acquired two years ago for $500 million. Double Down is the third-highest grossing app on Facebook (FB), and the founders could create competition, at some point, write, Janney analysts Brian McGill and Tyler Batory. They add:

“IGT made a significant bet on social gaming with the acquisition of Double Down … growth exceeded expectations until the last two quarters, when the growth rate has slowed rather dramatically. IGT believes it will be successful in the long-run, as it adds its content to the site. The long-term success of online and social gaming is one of the bullish arguments for IGT.”

Top 5 Industrial Conglomerate Companies To Watch In Right Now: Valmont Industries Inc.(VMI)

Valmont Industries, Inc. produces and sells fabricated metal products, pole and tower structures, and mechanized irrigation systems in the United States and internationally. The company?s Engineered Infrastructure Products segment offers steel and aluminum poles and structures, to which lighting and traffic control fixtures are attached for applications in streets, highways, parking lots, sports stadiums, and commercial and residential developments; and roadway safety systems, including guard rail barrier systems, wire rope safety barriers, and crash attenuation barriers to redirect vehicles and to prevent collisions between vehicles. This segment also provides structures and components for the wireless communication market, as well as for the erection of infrastructure, industrial, and commercial access systems. Its Utility Support Structures segment offers tapered steel and pre-stressed concrete poles for high-voltage transmission lines, substations, and electrical dist ribution, as well as produces hybrid structures, which are structures with a concrete base section and steel upper sections. The company?s Coatings segment provides metal coating services, such as hot-dipped galvanizing, anodizing, powder coating, and e-coating. Its Irrigation segment offers mechanical irrigation equipment and related service parts under the Valley brand. The company also manufactures forged steel grinding media for the mining industry, tubular products for industrial customers, and electrolytic manganese dioxide for disposable batteries; and distributes industrial fasteners. It serves state and federal governments, contractors, utility and telecommunications companies, commercial lighting fixtures manufacturers, and large farms, as well as the general manufacturing sector. The company sells its products through direct sales force, independent and commissioned sales agents, and independent dealers. Valmont Industries, Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headqua rtered in Omaha, Nebraska.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ong Kang Wei]

  The above snapshot shows the Glassdoor page for Valmont Industries (VMI), a company that I was looking into previously. I like looking at various metrics shown on the page, with its overall rating and what employees think of the CEO bearing the most significance to me. Other metrics I would advocate taking a look at are: What percentage of employees would recommend the job to a friend; and also how optimistic the employee is about the company's future (not shown in picture).

• [By Rich Duprey]

  Industrial conglomerate Valmont Industries (NYSE: VMI  ) reported first-quarter earnings that came in $0.10 per share better than consensus estimates but fell well short of expectations on the top line.

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Valmont Industries (NYSE: VMI) is expected to post its Q3 earnings at $2.43 per share on revenue of $800.97 million.

  Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) is estimated to post its Q3 earnings at $0.75 per share on revenue of $3.47 billion.

Hot Railroad Companies To Watch In Right Now: TAL Education Group(XRS)

TAL Education Group, together with its subsidiaries, provides K-12 after-school tutoring services in the People?s Republic of China. It offers tutoring services to K-12 students covering various academic subjects, including mathematics, English, Chinese, physics, chemistry, and biology. The company provides tutoring services through small classes; personalized premium services, such as one-on-one tutoring; and online course offerings. As of May 31, 2011, it operated a network of 199 physical learning centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Xi?an; and eduu.com, an online education platform for online courses. The company also offers education and management consulting services, as well as sells software. It operates under the Xueersi brand. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Beijing, China.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Louis Navellier]

  Education is a top priority in China and competition for the best schools are intense. TAL� Education Group (XRS) benefits form the focus on education by offering tutoring services for kids in grades k-12. They operate a network of 270 learning centers and 247 service centers in China and also have 5 call centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

• [By Lisa Levin]

  TAL Education Group (NYSE: XRS) shares rose 4.30% to $20.86. The volume of TAL Education Group shares traded was 318% higher than normal. TAL Education's PEG ratio is 1.14.

Hot Railroad Companies To Watch In Right Now: Nuveen Preferred and Convertible Income Fund (JPC)

Nuveen Multi-Strategy Income & Growth Fund is a close-ended balanced mutual fund launched by Nuveen Investments Inc. The fund is co-managed by Nuveen Asset Management, Spectrum Asset Management, Tradewinds Global Investors, LLC, and Symphony Asset Management, LLC. It invests in the public equity and fixed income markets of the United States. The fund seeks to invest in the stocks of companies operating across diversified sectors. For the fixed income portfolio, it invests in the debt instruments, including high yield debt and senior loans. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the Merrill Lynch Preferred Stock Hybrid Securities Index, Lehman Tier 1 Capital Securities Index, Merrill Lynch All U.S. Convertibles Index, and CSFB High Yield index. It was formerly known as Nuveen Preferred and Convertible Income Fund. Nuveen Multi-Strategy Income & Growth Fund was formed on March 26, 2003 and is domiciled in the United States.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Douglas A. McIntyre]

  J.C. Penney (NYSE: JPC) and the KMart and Sears divisions of Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) are supposes to be the losers among large U.S. retailers. Their stores are too old, their brands too badly damaged, and their balance sheet too frail for either to do well in the white hot competition for holiday sales. However, their stock prices say otherwise, which means there is some expectation that they will outperform forecasts.

Hot Railroad Companies To Watch In Right Now: Nice Systems Ltd (NICE)

NICE-Systems Ltd. (NICE), incorporated on September 28, 1986, is a provider of solutions that enable enterprises and security organizations to extract insight from interactions, transactions and surveillance to drive business performance and ensure safety and security. Its solutions enable companies and public organizations to capture, manage, analyze and impact unstructured interaction, as well as transactional data, enabling such entities to comply with internal and governmental regulations, improve business and operational performance and address security threats while increasing situational awareness. Unstructured content includes cross-channel analysis of phone calls, chat, instant messaging and e-mail interactions to contact centers, trading floors, branches, home agents and back offices, phone calls to emergency service providers and first responders, video captured by closed circuit cameras, radio communications between emergency services��and first responders��personnel, Internet sessions, e-mail and instant messaging and security management solutions for command and control centers. In May 2010, the Company acquired Lamda Communication Networks Ltd.

On January 11, 2010, NICE completed the acquisition of certain assets and liabilities of Orsus Solutions Limited and certain subsidiaries of Orsus. On August 31, 2009, NICE and certain subsidiaries of NICE completed the acquisition of the voting securities of certain subsidiaries of Fortent, Inc. (Fortent). On August 31, 2009, NICE completed the acquisition of Hexagon System Engineering Ltd. (Hexagon). On June 17, 2009, the Company completed the acquisition of Syfact.

The Company�� products include NICE SmartCenter, NICE Perform Interaction Recording, NICE Perform eXpress (NPX), NICE Quality Management, NICE Interaction Analytics, NICE Real-Time Guidance, NICE Packaged Business Solutions, NICE Feedback, NICE IEX Workforce Management, Performance Manager, Network Embedded Logger and NiceCall Focus III. It also incl! udes Actimize Fraud Prevention Suite, Actimize Anti-Money Laundering Suite, Actimize Brokerage Compliance Suite, Actimize Enterprise Risk Case Manager, Mirra IV, NICE Inform, NiceVision Net, NiceVision ControlCenter, NiceVision Analytics, NiceVision Digital, NiceVision SafeRoute, NICE Situator, FAST alpha Silver, NiceTrack.

NICE SmartCenter leverages the synergies of the combined capabilities of NICE Perform, NICE Quality Management, NICE Interaction Analytics, NICE Feedback, IEX TotalView and Performance Manager. NICE Perform Interaction Recording records customer interactions with contact center agents, financial trading floors, investment banking and enterprises, with a separate suite of applications for contact centers and investment banking, including for organizations that have a relatively small number of input channels. NICE Perform eXpress (NPX) brings the capabilities of Nice Perform into a single box, low TCO solution based on commercial hardware for small businesses or small systems. NICE Quality Management delivers tools for implementing a multifaceted quality program encompassing agents, supervisors, evaluators and managers.

NICE Interaction Analytics utilizes a multi-dimensional analysis approach to analyze customer interactions across communication channels and provide automated business insight and root cause analysis based on speech analytics, e-mail and chat analysis, call flow analysis, screen content analysis and integration with customer relationship management (CRM) data. NICE Real-Time Guidance leverages interaction analytics in order to provide recommendations to the agent in real-time during a phone or chat interaction with a customer, popping up contextually relevant instructions to the agent within call-out windows.

NICE Packaged Business Solutions is a set of out-of-the-box solutions designed to address common contact center challenges, including Customer Churn Reduction, Sales Effectiveness, Customer Experience, Marketing Effective! ness, Col! lections Optimization, Quality Optimization, such as First Contact Resolution and Average Handling Time. NICE Feedback is a solution for collecting real-time customer feedback after a call or any other type of interaction with the organization. NICE IEX Workforce Management forecasts customer interactions, schedules agents with appropriate skills to manage and optimize level of customer service and resources, measures agent and team performance and supports managing overall contact center performance

Performance Manager maps enterprise business objectives to group and individual goals, tracks and reports performance. Network Embedded Logger offers a Linux based voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) Logger embedded in Cisco routers, suitable for branch recording with NICE Perform. NiceCall Focus III provides a voice recording system for organizations that have a relatively small number of input channels and a cost-effective solution for branch recording (TDM only) with centralized storage. Actimize Fraud Prevention Suite is a suite of focused cross-channel fraud prevention solutions, available individually or as an integrated whole, used in both real-time and batch processing to detect and prevent the fraud.

Actimize Anti-Money Laundering Suite is an end-to-end suite of solutions that are available individually or as an integrated whole used to monitor and identify suspicious activities for customers and facilitate regulatory compliance processes. Actimize Enterprise Risk Case Manager is a centralized platform for holistic case and alert management that enables an enterprise-wide approach to risk and compliance operations management. Mirra IV provides small recording system that is suited to simple recording applications, in which it can record up to 48 channels of voice traffic from a variety of analog and digital interfaces. NICE Inform provides information management solution for management of multimedia interactions for security command and control centers, enables effectiv! e managem! ent of multimedia incident information from various sources, for faster incident reconstruction, greater insight and improved response.

NiceVision Net provides a complete solution for Internet protocol (IP) video security, including encoders, decoders and network video recorders. NiceVision ControlCenter provides a control room management and network-based digital video matrix. NiceVision Analytics provides a set of video content analytics applications for automated detection of threats, safety and operational related events. NiceVision Digital provides a portfolio of digital video recorders for different capacities and performance requirements. NiceVision SafeRoute provides a solution for mobile video surveillance onboard public transport vehicles. FAST alpha Silver provides digital video monitoring and recording solution for large to mid-size applications. NiceTrack provides interception, delivery, monitoring, collection and advanced analysis of telecommunication interactions.

The Company competes with Aspect Software, Inc., Autonomy Corp., Cybertech International, eLoyalty, Genesys Telecommunicatons, Nexidia, Verint Systems Inc., ACI Worldwide, FICO, Mantas, Inc., Norkom Group plc, Oracle Corporation, SAS Institute Inc., Sungard Data Systems Inc., ASC Telecom, AudioSoft, Redbox Recorders, Bosch, Genetec Inc., IndigoVision, Milestone Systems A/S, ONSSI, Schneider Electric, Atis, ETI, JSI Telecom, Pen-link Ltd., SS8 Networks, Inc. and Trovicor.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By shash63]

  In January, Nice Systems (NICE) had announced that it is in discussion with Verint Systems (VRNT) for possible acquisition. This acquisition will cost Nice Systems $1.5 billion. After this acquisition, the combined sales of both companies is expected to be around $1.5 billion annually, and it will control 70% of the voice recording market, and 50% of the video recording market. This acquisition shouldn�� face any hurdles as Verint System recently purchased the controlling stake of its holding company, Comverse Technologies, thus becoming an independent company. This deal will make it simpler for Nice System to acquire Verint Systems.

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Breaking news

  Wi-LAN (NASDAQ: WILN) today announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a process to explore and evaluate a broad range of strategic alternatives for the Company to enhance shareholder value. To read the full news, click here. MannKind (NASDAQ: MNKD) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged the resubmission of a New Drug Application (NDA) for AFREZZA庐 (insulin human [rDNA origin]) Inhalation Powder. To read the full news, click here. lululemon athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) today announced that Tara Poseley has been appointed to its Senior Leadership Team as Chief Product Officer. To read the full news, click here. Nice Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) reported a drop in its third-quarter profit. To read the full news, click here.

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• [By Lee Jackson]

  NICE Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: NICE) is the worldwide leading provider of software solutions that enable organizations to take the next best action in order to improve customer experience and business results, ensure compliance, fight financial crime and safeguard people and assets. NICE’s solutions empower organizations to capture, analyze and apply, in real time, insights from both structured and unstructured Big Data. Investors are paid a 1.3% dividend. J.P. Morgan has a $46 price target, while the consensus sits at $44. The stock closed Tuesday at $42.20 a share.