Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014

You can be forgiven if you've never heard of Fairway Group Holdings (NASDAQ: FWM  ) . The company is responsible for Fairway Market, a small chain of high-end grocery stores currently in and around the greater New York City metropolitan area.

Back to the beginning
Fairway dates back to the 1930s, when it started out as a small local market, and today it still maintains its small footprint with only 12 stores in what's estimated to be a $30 billion food retail market in the greater New York City metropolitan area; however management has some big growth plans in mind. This probably helps explain its recent IPO in April of this year. And since then, the stock has been on a tear, rising 58% and counting.

Is opportunity knocking?
While Fairway is tiny today, management sees the Northeast market (from New England to the District of Columbia) ultimately supporting up to 90 stores along with an additional 300 nationwide. So is it reasonable to believe that the market can support 400 or so Fairway stores? Possibly. Let's take a look at some other well-known names to see how they stack up:

Best Cheap Companies For 2015: Primero Mining Corp (PPP)

Primero Mining Corp. (Primero) is a precious metals producer with operations in Mexico. The Company is focused on precious metals assets in the Americas through acquiring, exploring, developing and operating mineral resource properties. As of December 31, 2011, Primero had one producing property, the San Dimas Mine, located in Mexico�� San Dimas district, on the border of Durango and Sinaloa states, and one exploration property, Ventanas, located in Durango state, Mexico. The San Dimas Mine consists of three underground gold and silver mining operations at Tayoltita, San Antonio (Central Block) and Santa Rita. In 2011, the San Dimas Mine produced 79,564 ounces of gold and 4.6 million ounces of silver. Primero also holds 28 mining concessions (3,470.4 hectares) at Mala Noche-Ventanas-San Cayetano (the Ventanas Project). Primero has three active, wholly owned subsidiaries include Primero Empresa Minera, S.A. de C.V., Silver Trading (Barbados) Ltd. and Primero Mining Luxembourg s.a r.l. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Dan also highlights a new agreement with Brazil's Vale (NYSE: VALE  ) as an example of a new partner streaming agreement that features a focus on gold. Can Silver Wheaton continue to profit from future agreements with partners such as Barrick Gold (NYSE: ABX  ) , Primaro Mining (NYSE: PPP  ) , and Hudbay Minerals (NYSE: HBM  ) ?

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: Potlatch Corporation(PCH)

Potlatch Corporation operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and manages timberlands located in Arkansas, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin in the United States. The Resource Management Division manages its timberlands, harvests timber, procures other wood fiber, sells logs and leases land for hunting and other recreational activity. The Real Estate Division develops and sells land parcels, as well as invests in timberlands. The Wood Products Division manufactures lumber, plywood, and particleboard in Arkansas, Idaho, Michigan, and Minnesota. This segment's products are sold to wholesalers primarily for use in home building and other construction activities. Potlatch was founded in 1903 and is headquartered in Spokane, Washington.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Saibus Research]

  WY and the majority of the timber, forest and paper products companies have a track record of unimpressive returns on capital, cyclical revenue and profit trends, heavy use of capital expenditures, and significant environmental regulation. We also think that WY's conversion to a REIT was a mistake. Morningstar Investment Research's Timber, Forest and Paper Products analyst Dan Rohr said it best when he rated WY and its Timber REIT peers Rayonier (RYN), Potlatch (PCH) and Plum Creek (PCL) as not possessing any economic moat. That probably explains why we only have an ancillary exposure to this industry for our proprietary portfolio based on our holdings in Brookfield Infrastructure (BIP) and Cintas (CTAS). Brookfield's Timber segment only accounts for 5% of its Fund Flows from operations and Cintas's document management business is suffering from reduced prices on recycled paper. At least Cintas Document Management only accounts for 8% of Cintas's revenue.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  In Weyerhaeuser's report, watch for the company to discuss any plans for potential buyout activity. With tight supplies, smaller rivals Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE: LPX  ) or Potlatch (NASDAQ: PCH  ) might make good targets for the larger Weyerhaeuser or Plum Creek to look at for expansion. Even though those companies have seen their shares rise dramatically as well, it might be worth paying up in order to secure long-term assets that could produce strong growth for Weyerhaeuser.

• [By Dividends4Life]

  Potlatch Corporation (PCH) operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and manages timberlands located in Arkansas, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin. December 6th the company increased its quarterly dividend 13% to $0.35 per share. The dividend is payable December 31, 2013 to stockholders of record on December 17, 2013. The yield based on the new payout is 3.5%.

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: Creston PLC (CRE)

Creston Plc is a United Kingdom-based company engaged in insight and communications services. The Company operates in three divisions: Communications division, which offers clients an integrated approach to their marketing and communication strategy, offering a range of services, which include advertising, brand strategy, channel marketing, customer relationship marketing, digital marketing, direct marketing, local marketing, social media marketing and public relations; Health division, which provides an integrated communications solution to the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector and offers services, which include advertising, advocacy, digital and direct marketing, public relations, issues and reputation management and medical education; Insight division, which performs a range of market research services on behalf of its clients, through both qualitative and quantitative means, using face-to-face, telephone and online data collection techniques. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Investment Biker]

  Over the years, WAL has changed its loan origination strategy. Post crisis, WAL's i) loan growth has been driven by commercial real estate (CRE) and Commercial & Industrial loans (C&I), ii) Construction and development share of loans has reduced from 24% in 2005 to 7% in 1Q'2013 and iii) completely cessation of new loan origination in the residential mortgage segment.

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: Alpha Natural Resources inc. (ANR)

Alpha Natural Resources, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in producing, processing, and selling steam and metallurgical coal in the United States. The company has mining operations in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Wyoming. As of December 31, 2011, it owned or leased approximately 4.7 billion tons of proven and probable coal reserves; and operated 145 mines in northern and central Appalachia and the Powder River basin. The company is also involved in repairing and reselling equipment and parts used in surface mining; manufacturing particulate scrubbers and filters for underground diesel engine applications; rebuilding underground mining equipment; and providing coal and environmental analysis, and degassing services. In addition, it engages in the sale of non-strategic assets, such as timber, gas, and oil rights, as well as the lease and sale of non-strategic surface properties and reserves; coal brokerage; and road construction business. The company serves electric utilities, steel and coke producers, industrial customers, and energy traders and brokers. Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is based in Abingdon, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Udovich]

  We recently added small cap coal stock�Alpha Natural Resources, Inc (NYSE: ANR) to our SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity (SCN EO)�portfolio as a short-term position despite the fact it has underperformed the Market Vectors-Coal ETF (NYSEARCA: KOL) along with President Obama�� ��ar on coal.��And while you might be leery of betting on a coal stock with almost four years left for the current administration to wield power, but there is a good reason why investors in small cap coal stocks like Alpha Natural Resources could be rewarded.

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: United Utilities Group PLC (UUGRY)

United Utilities Group PLC, incorporated on April 08, 2008, is the holding company of a group which owns and operates water and wastewater assets in the North West of England. The Company provides water and wastewater services to around seven million people and businesses in the North West of England, through its wholly owned subsidiary United Utilities Water PLC (UUW). UUW holds licenses to provide water and wastewater services to a population of approximately seven million people in the North West of England.

The Company had approximately 56,000 hectares of catchment land, approximately 189 reservoirs, approximately 94 water treatment works, over 42,000 kilometers of water pipes, over 77,000 kilometers of sewer pipes, and approximately 570 wastewater treatment works. The Company�� wholly owned subsidiaries include United Utilities Water PLC and United Utilities Property Services Limited.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Harvey Jones]

  Severn Trent's share price has had a flat 12 months, aside from a bout of takeover excitement in May, which pushed the stock to a 12-month high of 20.90p. But management rejected the bid, claiming it failed to recognize the value in the business, and the excitement trickled away. Now it trades at 7.20p. That still represents of rise of 23% over three years and 29% over five years, against 18% and 26% for the FTSE 100 respectively. So there is growth to be had, although being a utility, most investors will focus on the income. Right now, Severn Trent yields 4.41%. That is less than fellow water company United Utilities Group (UUGRY), which yields 5.05%, but still comfortably above the FTSE 100 average of 3.54%.

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: BMC Software Inc. (BMC)

BMC Software, Inc. develops software that provides system and service management solutions for enterprises in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Enterprise Service Management and Mainframe Service Management. The Enterprise Service Management segment offers service assurance solutions that manage availability and performance management, event management, service impact management, and capacity management; service automation solutions managing provisioning, configuration change, and compliance automation for servers, networks, applications, and databases; service support solutions, which manages service desk, incident management, service request management, problem management, asset management, service level management, change and release management, and identity management; and BMC Atrium that provides shared technologies that unify information and processes from disparate management tools, and assigns priorities to business servic es. It also offers consulting, implementation, integration, IT process design and re-engineering, and educational services related to its software products. The Mainframe Service Management segment provides mainframe data and performance management solutions that ensure the availability and reliability of the business critical data, applications, and systems; and enterprise workload automation solutions comprising CONTROL-M product line, a set of features enabling data centers to automate their complex workloads and critical business processes. The company serves manufacturers, telecommunication companies, educational institutions, retailers, distributors, hospitals, and other industries, as well as channel partners, including resellers, distributors and systems integrators directly. BMC Software, Inc. was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Alex Jordon]

  A variety of acquisitions ramps up Oracle's presence in cloud computing, like deals with RightNow, Taleo, and Eloqua. The annual run-rate of their cloud business is already over $1 billion, larger than Workday (WDAY) and SAP (SAP) combined. New customers include British Telecom (BT), BMC Software (BMC), Siemens (SI), Yahoo (YHOO), and Intuit (INTU).

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  But one big element pushing Splunk's stock higher was the buyout offer that rival BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC  ) received earlier this month. A group of private investors that includes Bain Capital made the $6.9 billion offer for BMC, and with activist investor Elliott Management having blessed the deal, it's likely to go through. The strategic move establishes the value of companies in the data-analytics space, especially given that BMC had already lost its competitive edge against Splunk and other rivals.

Top Prefered Companies To Watch For 2014: Banro Corp (BAA)

Banro Corporation (Banro) is a Canada-based gold exploration company. The Company holds, through four wholly owned subsidiaries, a 100% interest in four gold properties, which are known as Twangiza, Namoya, Lugushwa and Kamituga. These properties are covered by a total of 13 exploitation permits and are found along the 210 kilometer-long Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in the South Kivu and Maniema Provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Company also holds 14 exploration permits covering an aggregate of 2,638 square kilometers. Its 10 of the permits are located in the vicinity of the Company's Twangiza property and four are located in the vicinity of the Company's Namoya property. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company was engaged in the construction of the Company�� Twangiza Phase I oxide mine, and continued its exploration activities at its Twangiza, Namoya and Lugushwa properties. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Anthony Mirhaydari]

  I’ve added shares of BVN to my Edge Letter Sample Portfolio.

  Breakout Gold Stocks to Buy: Banro (BAA)

  
  Click to Enlarge Banro (BAA) is a gold mining outfit with operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The company recently announced a 15% increase in gold production in the fourth quarter thanks to expansion and efficiency gains at its Twangiza facility.

• [By Bryan Murphy]

  With the weekend just around the corner - and with folks looking to close the books on what's been a miserable week - most traders have already closed shop and gone home. Big mistake. Some of the best trades I've ever found were uncovered when nobody else cared, or was interested. Enter Banro Corporation (NYSEMKT:BAA)... a name I stumbled cross today when few other were even looking. I think BAA could be an explosive bullish mover over the course of the next few weeks. Though I don't want to get married to it, I sure wouldn't mind dating it for a while.