I wrote the series the Top 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years back in May and June of this year. Since the series finished we had three companies go the way of acquisition: Opsware (NASDAQ: OPSW), Color Kinetics (NASDAQ: CLRK) and Kyphon (NASDAQ: KYPH). All three have been or are about to close on their respective deals and will vanish from our list of 25. The good news is the premiums were outstanding and any investor who bought these stocks after reading the initial write ups is walking away with over 50% profits in a few short months!

But onward and upward: Drum roll please.....the three new stocks that I feel could be in the top 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 Years include: eHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: EHTH), Bankrate (NASDAQ: RATE) and Fuel Tech (NASDAQ:FTEK).

eHealth is a $570 million market capitalization company headquartered in Mountain View, California. The company operates a multi-web site platform that offers its customers more than 7,000 health insurance and related products. The company is licensed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Through its ehealth.com and ehealthinsurance.com web sites, customers can price out regular medical, dental and vision insurance. The company also provides options for student-health care insurance as well. My estimates for calendar 2007 is for revenues of $87 million and earnings per share of $.49. For 2008 I envision revenues of $115 million and earnings per share of $.68. As health care insurance is fast becoming a major political as well as economic issue, eHealth may be the winner in finding the best policies at the best price for consumers and small-to-medium size businesses.

Continue reading Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: three new names

Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: three new names originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In May and June, I wrote a series on what I think could be the top 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years. It was a fun exercise and a lot of work. Since the series finished in mid-June, we've been knocked down from 25 stocks to 22 stocks: Opsware (NASDAQ: OPSW), Kyphon (NASDAQ: KYPH) and Color Kinetics (NASDAQ: CLRK) are all being acquired for significant premiums by obviously much larger companies.

We have another on our list that, although it's not being acquired, the stock has doubled in value these past 2 1/2 months. Blue Coat Systems (NASDAQ: BCSI) was written up on June 8. The stock was trading at $44, but it's now at $84.80. Blue Coat reported an absolutely explosive July quarter. Revenues came in at $62.4 million versus Street consensus of $58 million, representing a 71% year-over-year increase and a 15% up-sequentially from the April quarter.

The wide-area-network (WAN) optimization product set is gaining mainstream momentum. The even better news for Blue Coat Systems is that it is about to embark on an excellent new product cycle. The company saw bookings, pipeline and deferred revenues all go up substantially this past quarter and provide tremendous visibility going forward.

Continue reading Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Blue Coat Systems (BCSI) -- update

Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Blue Coat Systems (BCSI) -- update originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I wrote the series, Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years during the months of May and June. It was a labor of love as I examined more than 300 companies to come up with what I thought would be the best of the best going forward. The series came to me as a result of a USA Today article back in early May detailing the top 25 stocks of the PAST 25 years. So many of the names were surprising, as many were obvious.

Since I finished the series, three of the top 25 are about to be acquired by larger, well-funded companies. Color Kinetics (NASDAQ: CLRK) will be bought by Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG) for $791 million, or $34 per share. Opsware (NASDAQ: OPSW) will be swallowed by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) for $1.45 billion or $14.25 per share and finally, Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) will acquire Kyphon (NASDAQ: KYPH) for $3.9 billion or $71 per share. All three transactions are for 100% cash -- no stock, which in itself is very interesting. But what happened and why are these three going to melt into larger organizations?

For emerging growth companies to become truly great, several factors need to be in place for shareholders to benefit. 1) Great and talented senior management needs to be committed and feel the passion of its company's direction. 2) A large addressable market, preferably global in nature, and 3) the opportunity to operate under the radar screen of larger, needy companies. Well, two out of three ain't bad!!

Continue reading Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: What happened?

Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: What happened? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The NEXT name in my on-going series of the Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years is Zoltek Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZOLT). Zoltek is headquartered in suburban St. Louis, Missouri and has a current market capitalization of $1.1 billion. The stock is trading at $39. For full disclosure, I have been recommending Zoltek to the members of my web site since $19-20 just a few months ago. The stock is still a buy.

Zoltek develops, manufactures and distributes carbon fiber which has hundreds of applications. Zoltek is considered an alternative energy company as carbon fiber weighs less than traditional materials and therefore employs far less energy. Some of the applications are in primary building materials: Sporting goods, aircraft braking systems, and the blades on energy creating wind turbines. Zoltek has received a lot of attention in the wind turbines sector as the demand is very high for these windmill-looking energy generators. The carbon fiber making up the blades requires little to no maintenance and is lighter allowing for faster revolutions. Thus, more energy is generated by using Zoltek's carbon fiber.

Continue reading The Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Zoltek-ZOLT

The Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Zoltek-ZOLT originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The NEXT company in my ongoing series of the Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years is Blue Coat Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BCSI). This Sunnyvale, California based company has a current market capitalization of $625 million and was founded in 1996 as CacheFlow, Inc. CacheFlow changed its name to Blue Coat Systems in 2002.

Blue Coat Systems makes appliances and client-based solutions that allow organizations the ability to enhance security and accelerate performance for their networks. Its key product set is the ProxySG family of appliances, which improve existing authentication systems right down to the actual user. ProxyAV is an anti-virus appliance that allows enterprises to scan for viruses, spyware, worms and Trojans at the internet gateway level and at the email level. The product is designed to detect these viruses that bypass existing virus-scanning devices.

Continue reading Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Blue Coat Systems

Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years: Blue Coat Systems originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The NEXT stock in my on-going series of the 25 Top Stocks for the NEXT 25 Years is VistaPrint (NASDAQ: VPRT). VistaPrint completed its initial public offering (IPO) in October 2005. It has comfortably achieved or exceeded every quarter since the IPO. The company has a current market capitalization of $1.7 billion and was founded in 1995. The company has posted 27 consecutive up quarters, the last 6 quarters as a public entity.

VistaPrint provides graphic design services and customized print products to consumers and small-to-medium size business world-wide. Among its many products VistaPrint offers business cards, brochures, calendars, folded cards, envelopes, presentation folders, newsletters, etc. The customer can choose from various templates and graphic designs for logos and the other printed products. Customers also have access to over 70,000 stock photographs and illustrations to choose from.

The beauty of VistaPrint's business is that it has captured more than seven million customers to date from over 110 countries.The strength of this customer base is diverse and geographically scattered. VistaPrint aggressively markets its services and products in several on-line web sites. The long-term key is to grow the existing base and obviously capture a greater number of new customers, while marketing to the existing list for add-on sales.

Continue reading Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 years: VistaPrint

Top 25 Stocks for the NEXT 25 years: VistaPrint originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 31 May 2007 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.