5 Best Oil Service Stocks To Watch For 2014

Halliburton (HAL), Schlumberger (SLB) and Baker Hughes (BHI). Three oil services firms with three very different responses to news today.

Bloomberg

First up, Halliburton. It reported a profit of 93 cents a share, above forecasts for 89 cents, yet Halliburton’s shares have dropped 1.8% to $49.76. Citigroup’s Robin Shoemaker and Mark Brown explain why:

…the stock is trading lower today largely because the company cited several negative factors that are impacting its Latin America operations in 2014…

The major challenge comes from Brazil, where offshore drilling activity fell in 2013 and is expected to decline further in 2014. Halliburton won a large multi-year drilling services contract from�Petrobras (PBR) before offshore activity began to slow. After putting in place the people and infrastructure to execute the contract, [Halliburton] has been very disappointed with the volume of drilling services work that Petrobras� has needed under the terms of the contract…

Best Electric Utility Stocks To Invest In 2015: Opexa Therapeutics Inc.(OPXA)

Opexa Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, develops patient-specific cellular therapies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Its principal product includes Tovaxin, a personalized cellular immunotherapy treatment that completed Phase IIb clinical study for multiple sclerosis. Tovaxin is derived from T-cells isolated from peripheral blood, expanded ex vivo, and reintroduced into the patients via subcutaneous injections. The company was formerly known as PharmaFrontiers Corp. and changed its name to Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. in June 2006. Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. was founded in 2003 and is based in The Woodlands, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By CRWE]

  Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPXA), a biotechnology company developing a novel T-cell therapy for multiple sclerosis (MS), reported that the Company is rebranding its leading MS therapy with the new name Tcelna(TM).

5 Best Oil Service Stocks To Watch For 2014: Saes Getters SpA (SG&A)

SAES Getters SpA is an Italy-based company primarily engaged in the production of getters and metal dispensers. The Company structures its business into three main units: Industrial Applications, which includes getters and metal dispensers used in light sources and electron vacuum devices, getters for microelectronic and micromechanical systems, pumps for vacuum systems, getters for solar collectors, products for thermal insulation, and gas purifier systems; Shape Memory Alloys, which includes shape memory alloy semi-finished products, components and devices for medical and industrial applications, and Information Displays, which includes getters and metal dispensers for liquid crystal displays, and barium getters for cathode ray tubes. Additionally, through the Business Development Unit, the Company produces dryers and getters for organic light-emitting diode (OLED), sealants for solar panels and energy storage getter devices. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By GURUFOCUS]

  For investors, Qualcomm understand the benefits of cloud services. It seems there are numerous questions unresolved. Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies have been aggregating years of research and development data into medical databases, initiating overhauls of its R&D and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) segments for Pharma. A company willing to build their capabilities, and open to a new view of value will likely achieve better outcomes. Delivering support, personalization, scalability, speed and flexibility are attractive areas for growth.

• [By Jason Rivera]

  To help facilitate this destruction of value has been that Koss has bought back a lot of its shares as the company has been overvalued. The below quote is from its most recent annual report.
  In April of 1995, the Board of Directors approved a stock repurchase program authorizing the Company to purchase from time to time up to $2,000,000 of its common stock for its own account. Subsequently, the Board of Directors periodically has approved increases in the stock repurchase program. As of June 30, 2012, the most recently approved increase was for additional purchases of $2,000,000, which occurred in October of 2006, for an aggregate maximum of $45,500,000, of which $43,360,247 had been expended through June 30, 2012 . No purchases were made during the year ended June 30, 2012. The Company intends to effect all stock purchases either on the open market or through privately negotiated transactions and intends to finance all stock purchases through its own cash flow or by borrowing for such purchases.As you can see from this page, most of KOSS' margins have dropped substantially since 2007. Especially of note is its operating margin, ROE and ROIC. Book value per share, cash flow per share, revenue and working capital have all dropped substantially as well. Normally when I have evaluated companies' cost of goods sold rising is what has caused the above metrics to drop, but that has stayed relatively stable over the years at KOSS. The culprit in this case is selling, general and administrative (SG&A) related expenses expressed below as a percentage of its sales. The following numbers were taken from Morningstar:

5 Best Oil Service Stocks To Watch For 2014: Location Based Technologies Inc (LBAS)

Location Based Technologies, Inc. (LBT), incorporated on April 20, 2006, designs, develops, and sells personal, pet, and vehicle locator devices and services including PocketFinder People, PocketFinder Pets and PocketFinder Vehicles. The Company markets and sells consumer and commercial location devices and services. Its devices utilize Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technologies in conjunction with its technologies designed to enhance the families to interact and stay connected around the world. The Company is a developer of the PocketFinder family of products and the PocketFinder Network. The PocketFinder family of products includes the PocketFinder People, PocketFinder Vehicle, PocketFinder Pets, PocketFinder Luggage, PocketFinder Mobile and PocketFinder Fleet. The PocketFinder is a small location device that enables a user to locate a device, person, or pet, at anytime from almost anywhere. PocketFinder personal locator devices are wireless.

The Company generate revenue by selling its products and charging customers an ongoing service fee, for which it offers monthly and annual subscription plans. The Company�� product, PocketFinder, is a small, waterproof and wireless location device that enables users to locate anyone or anything they care about, from a computer or Web-enabled device. Its products deliver critical information to users, such as: device location, longitude, latitude, heading speed and 60 days of location history. This information can be viewed passively through a user�� account or can be sent to a user via email or push notification if the user sets an alert. The target markets for the PocketFinder include: young children, seniors, people with special needs and people who need to track valuable assets such as luggage or sporting equipment. In addition to the PocketFinder, it also sell the PocketFinder Pet and the PocketFinder Vehicle products. The PocketFinder Pet is designed for pets weighing 15 pounds or more,! and it markets the PocketFinder Vehicle to families with new drivers, car enthusiasts, motorcycle owners, watercraft owners and business fleets. The PocketFinder Vehicle attaches directly to a battery or fuse box, so it has a constant supply of power. All PocketFinder products operate on the same user interface, which enables its customers receive the same features, functionality and user-experience, regardless of which product they own. To access their account or locate their devices, users can logon to the Company�� Website at www.pocketfinder.com or use its native iPhone, iPad or Android Apps.

The Company�� products are sold through various brick-and-mortar and online retailers and through its Website. It provides customer service and support in the United States through existing call centers owned by Affinitas. It provides wireless location based solutions for global positioning products along with its friendly user interface software system. PocketFinder and PocketFinder Vehicle devices are being sold in the United States and in Canada through the Apple Online Store and Apple Retail Stores. PocketFinder devices for Pets are available for purchase on its Website.

The Company competes with Geospatial Platform Providers, Application Developers, Garmin�� GTU-10, Qualcomm�� Tagg, Lo-Jack, SpotLight, Fleetmatics, NetworkFleet, and Qualcomm.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By CRWE]

  Today, LBAS has shed (-7.69%) -0.010 at $.120 with 95,100 shares in play thus far (ref. google finance Delayed: 12:21PM EDT August 15, 2013).

  Location Based Technologies, Inc. previously reported it has signed a distribution agreement with Beijing Lava Technology Co. Ltd., an Apple approved distributor for its online, brick and mortar stores, and authorized distributors in Asia. The agreement is one of the final steps preceding the launch of LBT�� GPS products into the Asian markets. Beijing Lava Technology Co. Ltd. serves China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

  LBT estimates that it will begin selling its PocketFinder devices in Singapore through Apple�� online store and authorized distributors in the near future with other Asian countries to follow thereafter.

• [By CRWE]

  Today, LBAS�remains (0.00%) +0.000 at $.132 with 9,470 shares in movement thus far (ref. google finance Delayed: 9:47AM EDT June 20, 2013).

  Location Based Technologies, Inc. previously received FCC and IC certification for its versatile LBT-886 device. These certifications are necessary before devices can be sold to consumers throughout the US and Canada.

  The LBT-886 device is available for manufacture in a 2G or 3G variant. The 3G penta-band variant will enable the device to function in countries which only operate on the 3G spectrum, such as Australia, South Korea, Japan and some areas of Canada. This global tracking solution also delivers additional features such as various environmental sensors or comes with an attachment with special capability designed to meet lone-worker or personnel security requirements

5 Best Oil Service Stocks To Watch For 2014: United States Steel Corporation(X)

United States Steel Corporation produces and sells steel mill products in North America and Central Europe. It operates in three segments: Flat-rolled Products (Flat-rolled), U. S. Steel Europe (USSE), and Tubular Products (Tubular). The Flat-rolled segment offers slabs, rounds, strip mill plates, sheets, and tin mill products, as well as iron ore and coke. This segment serves service center, conversion, transportation, construction, container, and appliance and electrical markets in North America. The USSE segment offers slabs, sheets, strip mill plates, tin mill products, and spiral welded pipes, as well as heating radiators and refractory ceramic materials. This segment serves the European construction, service center, conversion, container, transportation, and appliance and electrical, as well as and oil, gas, and petrochemical markets. The Tubular segment offers seamless and electric resistance welded steel casing and tubing; and standard, and line pipe and mechanical tubing. It primarily serves customers in the oil, gas, and petrochemical markets. The company also provides transportation services, including railroad and barge operations. In addition, it owns, develops, and manages various real estate assets, which include approximately 200,000 acres of surface rights primarily in Alabama, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania; participates in joint ventures that are developing real estate projects in Alabama, Maryland, and Illinois; and owns approximately 4,000 acres of land in Ontario, Canada. The company was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Steeling yourself for further declines?
  A similar argument exists for other low-price-to-book stocks, including Cliffs Natural (NYSE: CLF  ) , Alcoa (NYSE: AA  ) , and U.S. Steel (NYSE: X  ) . Each of these three companies has a highly capital-intensive business involved in processing raw materials and producing either ingredients for fabricated metal production or the metals themselves. When you look at their balance sheets, all of these companies have substantial amounts of assets locked up in plants and equipment, much of which hasn't been subject to depreciation yet.

• [By Alex Planes]

  Theodore Roosevelt's ascent to the presidency following President William McKinley's assassination revived the Sherman Antitrust Act from near-death, and it was finally used to dismantle a company in 1904. That year, the Northern Securities railroad trust -- controlled by J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, among others -- was found to control an unreasonably large part of American railroad traffic, and was broken back up into its component railroads. This reestablished the Act as a potent weapon against monopolies, and it was used many times over the following century against major companies, if not always successfully. Here are some of the landmark decisions issued under an interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, with brief explanations provided below (you can also click on their links for more information):

  Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 1911. United States v. Alcoa (NYSE: AA  ) , 1945. United States v. AT&T (NYSE: T  ) , 1982. United States v. United States Steel (NYSE: X  ) , 1920. United States v. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) , 2001. United States v. American Tobacco, 1911.

  The Standard Oil breakup in 1911 is the most important turning point of the Act's early history. It set a standard for "reasonableness" that has since been applied many times to determine what made a monopoly truly anticompetitive. Between this decision and the one that broke the American Tobacco trust several weeks later, the Supreme Court of 1911 is responsible for creating three long-tenured members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) -- two of which (both oil companies) are still on the index today.

• [By Reuben Brewer]

  Big U.S. steel makers like Nucor (NYSE: NUE  ) , U.S. Steel (NYSE: X  ) , and AK Steel (NYSE: AKS  ) have long complained about foreign steel being dumped into the U.S. market. China has been one of the more contentious issues on that front. Although the Chinese government has said it wants to reign in its steel industry, it may have a harder time than it hopes.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  The bear case on steel stocks like US Steel (X) and AK Steel (AKS) has been that lower iron-ore prices would ultimately lead to lower steel prices. That hasn’t happened yet, but JPMorgan’s Michael Gambardella and team haven’t given up hope.

  Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

  They explain why they favor Steel Dynamics (STLD) and Nucor (NUE) over US Steel and AK Steel:

  For the steel companies, we continue to believe that lower raw material costs and increased imports will pressure sheet prices lower. Given this cautious stance, we continue to prefer Nucor and Steel Dynamics (over AK Steel and US Steel) given their variable cost structures and significant leverage to an eventual recovery in non-residential construction.

  Count Axiom Capital’s Gordon Johnson among those that agree it’s just a matter of time before steel prices fall and drag down US Steel’s stock with them:

  …a very interesting American Metal Market (AMM) article from this morning suggests, in addition to the above, HRC volumes will be weak in C4Q14 (which would weigh negatively on US Steel�� margins structure). We believe US Steel�� stock is currently discounting HRC prices at ~$670/ton in 2014 & 2015. [The article says steel prices have fallen to $640 a ton. Ed.]

  US Steel has dropped 0.9% to $33.33 at 1:35 p.m. today, while AK Steel has gained 1% to $6.36, Nucor has advanced 0.4% to $50.12 and Steel Dynamics is unchanged at $21.06.