"If you use a mobile phone with a camera, thank Tessera (NASDAQ: TSRA)," says Mike Cintolo in the Cabot Top Ten Report. "When it comes to miniaturization, Tessera is the go-to company."

"Tessera is one of the companies that drove the price of camera components down by miniaturizing them and combining them on a single chip.

"You'll find its technology in MP3 players, video games, wireless phones, computers and numerous other products where companies are forever working to design products smaller and manufacture them more cheaply.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Thornburg Mortgage, Whirlpool and Jackson Hewitt were today's noteworthy downgrades:

• Jefferies downgraded shares of Thornburg Mortgage (NYSE: TMA) to Hold from Buy to reflect the ongoing dislocation of the mortgage markets and lowered their target to $3.75 from $14. While they believe Thornburg will probably survive its current liquidity crisis, they think the company's capital structure will be impaired further.
  
• JP Morgan downgraded Whirlpool (NYSE: WHR) to Underweight from Neutral, citing valuation, higher steel prices, the difficult macro environment and competition.
  
• Stephens cut Jackson Hewitt (NYSE: JTX) to Equal Weight from Overweight to reflect the company's recent results and concerns over the issues that have impacted the basic business.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Merrill lowered Bank of Montreal (NYSE: BMO) to Sell from Neutral.
  
• Lehman downgraded PDL BioPharma (NASDAQ: PDLI) to Equal Weight from Overweight.
  
• Friedman Billings downgraded Tessera (NASDAQ: TSRA) to Market Perform from Outperform.

Each year Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, surveys the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is part of his 24th annual Top Picks Report.

Tessera Technologies (NASDAQ: TSRA) is a favorite speculative idea for 2007 from Jim Oberweis, editor of The Oberweis Report. The small-cap growth advisor explains, "We screen for companies that are delivering accelerating earnings and sales growth rates -- and ideally those that are not widely followed by Wall Street.

"Tessera develops semiconductor packaging technology that allows semiconductor manufacturers to miniaturize the chip and to improve performance. The San Jose, California, company has signed license agreements with manufacturers representing 80% of the worldwide dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market, including Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

"DRAM in personal computers is shifting to DDR2 DRAM, which utilizes TSRA's packaging technology, and DDR2 is expected to represent roughly 75% of DRAM shipments in 2007. TSRA receives a per unit royalty for each DDR2 DRAM shipped by their licensees.

"For the quarter ended September 30, 2006, Tessera posted an 841% jump in earnings per share on a 460% rise in revenue. I believe that Wall Street's consensus estimate for revenue ($198.8MM) and earnings per share ($1.08) for 2007 are too low. Lower litigation expenses in 2007 as patent litigation subsides should drive operating margin expansion as well."