Stocks and Sectors

Shlomi Cohen submits:

I am adding to my portfolio an Israeli company that provides bandwidth management solutions, especially on cellular networks, Allot Communications (ALLT). At the same time, I am removing Incredimail (MAIL), after making a profit of 58% in nine months, and I do so just before the release of the fourth quarter results, probably this week, as the stock has shown continuous weakness since reaching a peak of almost $11 in the summer. I believe the weakness results from the share sales by one of the founders, Yaron Adler, who is no longer a director, and / or because of a large acquisition the company is about to make.

Allot provides solutions for managing loads with systems that do optimization through what is known in the professional jargon as DPI (deep packet inspection), which means monitoring the content on the networks and deciding on priorities and allocation of bandwidth to users according to the policies of the service provider. For example, the provider will prefer to allocate more bandwidth to a business customer, who pays a great deal of money, when he is conducting video conference calls over the IP network, and less to a user watching a clip on YouTube for pleasure via a smartphone.

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EMS Technologies, Inc. (ELMG)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call

March 10, 2010 9:30 am ET

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Barry Barker submits:

Barry Barker is founder and President of Barker Financial Management, a fee only Financial Planner and RIA based in Baltimore, MD. Before starting his investment firm, Barry earned a Masters from Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering and worked for FMC Corporation performing financial analyses of technical innovations and new business while developing technology alliances and joint ventures.

We recently had the opportunity to ask Barry what his single highest conviction stock holding currently is in his portfolio.

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Zacks.com submits:

US wireless kingpin Verizon (VZ) has reported that the field testing of its 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband network in Boston and Seattle have demonstrated encouraging throughput levels. These two cities are expected to be the initial markets where 4G LTE services will be commercially available in 2010.

Trails in these two test sites have shown the potential of achieving peak downlink speeds of 40 to 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and peak uplink speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps, significantly faster than the current 3G deployments. This represents a major milestone in Verizon’s first phase of 4G trial process, providing the roadmap for future test launches.

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Ockham Research submits:

Sprint Nextel (S) is getting a boost today after announcing that it will continue strict cost management in an effort to aggressively pay down debt. During a discussion with analysts, Sprint’s CFO Bob Brust reiterated their goals to reduce the debt burden which has slowly declined since the Nextel acquisition, too slowly for many investors. Sprint has seen improving trends as far as customer retention or churn rate in the last few quarters, but it is still a huge hurdle as more than half a million post-paid wireless clients defected to competitors in the fourth quarter. Perhaps most importantly though, Brust expects to see revenue growth in the coming quarters; it would be the first growth since fiscal 2006.

Obviously, when Sprint acquired Nextel they took on debt to finance the transaction, but they expected better growth and cost savings as a result of the transaction. Instead, the company has dealt with declining sales almost as soon as the $35 billion transaction closed. In hindsight, the so-called “merger of equals” has lead to plenty of headaches for the combined company and on Friday Sprint’s credit rating was chopped yet again by S&P to BB-. The credit rating agency pointed to continued churn in their precious post-paid wireless clients (504,000 post-paid subscribers lost in Q4), which is more profitable than the prepaid wireless service, which is at least growing.

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eChristian Investing submits:

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Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (SHEN)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call

March 4, 2010 9:00 am ET

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Zacks.com submits:

AT&T (T) has announced that it will launch two USB modems that will enable customers to stay connected on their laptops while accessing the carrier’s high-speed 3G network. As of today, March 7, 2010, the devices will be available online and at AT&T’s nationwide retail stores.

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Larry Dignan (ZDNet) submits:

Verizon Wireless (VZ) said Monday that its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) field trials are producing download speeds of 40 to 50 megabits per second with upload speeds half that tally.

Verizon has touted its LTE rollout as it looks to get a year jump on AT&T’s 4G rollout and trump early movers such as Clearwire, which is rolling out next-gen wireless services via WiMax technology.

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Market Blog submits:

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