Though coal could not be more hated and analysts expect years of losses at Alpha Natural Resources (ANR), this might actually be the time for the stock. As written last month (see Is The Coal Supercycle Back?), the coal super cycle could be intact so investors need to keep an eye on this sector.

The world's third-leading producer of metallurgical coal faces a tough road ahead due to pricing impacted by structural changes for CAPP thermal coal and weak global demand for metallurgical coal. As with any commodity, the market can be very cyclical and volatile providing opportunities to invest at periods of severe weakness.

The company has been in a continuous restructuring mode for several years now allowing it to dramatically reduce costs for the next up cycle. Now might be the time to move back into Alpha Natural.

Q1 2013 Highlights

The company provided the

For such a hot sector, the 3D printing leaders are showing surprisingly low organic growth. Leader 3D Systems (DDD) reported only 22.1% organic growth for the latest quarter while Stratasys Ltd (SSYS) only managed 18% after merging with Objet. Those aren't exactly the growth rates expected of stocks with forward earnings multiples of over 35x estimates. The sector is very profitable and has huge potential, but several other sectors have higher growth rates.

For 3D Systems, the revenue growth numbers are even worse if you look at the revenue per share. That number only increased 9% year-over-year to $1.11 from $1.02 due to a higher share count. For an acquisitive company, this calculation takes out the impact of shares issued and such similar to earnings per share. For any shareholder, the more important fact isn't the actual top and bottom line growth, but the total growth per share.

As warned back after the massive IPO gains, ExOne Company (XONE) was set up for a potentially rocky public market experience. The company only reported $28.7 million in revenue for all of 2012 and had a limited experience of actually selling 3D printers.

The 3D industrial printer company focuses on manufacturing and selling 3D printing machines in fact didn't even sell a machine in Q1 of 2012.

The stock surged to $49 prior to the earnings report after initially pricing the offering at $18 providing those initial investors with over a 170% gain in roughly four months. The Q113 numbers though were shockingly disappointing as the company yet again missed estimates blaming European weakness.

Q1 2013 Highlights

The company provided the following highlights for Q1 2013:

• Revenue increased by $5.2M to $7.9M; five machines sold in the quarter.
• 3D printed parts and material revenue increased to $3.7M from

All of a sudden, the stock of Millennial Media (MM) has become hot. The stock dropped roughly 50% from the highs in mid-February to the lows below $7 starting in April. Then suddenly stock spent Tuesday trading most of the day above $8 and appears set for a major run higher. Our previous article (See Millennial Media Could Be Zipping Higher Soon) at the end of March suggested that investors had become extremely pessimistic about a company growing revenue over 50% this year.

Millennial Media remains the leading independent mobile ad network provider with an estimated 18% market share of 3rd-party sales. Its technology, tools, and services help developers maximize their advertising revenue, acquire users for their apps, and gain insight about their users.

Previously, the discussion presented how Millennial Media could follow Zipcar's stock significantly higher after weak trading. That example was only one of numerous where

After reporting on the extreme valuation of Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) (see Has The Future Changed That Much For Tesla Motors?), another Elon Musk stock soared to levels making Tesla appear cheap. SolarCity (SCTY) leapt 24.2% on Monday heading into earnings after the close based mostly on the hype surrounding Musk. Did the stock deliver the earnings needed to justify the huge stock jump leading to a 300% gain since the IPO?

SolarCity provides renewable electricity directly to homeowners, business and governments by offering solar power to consumers at prices lower than typical utility costs.

At one point intra-day on Monday the stock was up 35% for the day and nearly 300% since the IPO back in December of last year. The company delivered more MWs than guided, but how does that intersect with the revenues and profit picture?

Any Reasonable Path To Profits?

As with the

While Prospect Capital Corporation (PSEC) continues to report record originations, the company is failing to pull those numbers to the net investment income (NII) line. Not only did the last quarter show essentially flat NII, but also it occurred on a substantially higher share base.

Prospect Capital is a leading provider of flexible private debt and equity capital to sponsor-owned and non-sponsor-owned middle market companies in the United States and Canada. It trades as a closed-end investment company that has elected to be treated as a business development company (BDC) under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

As highlighted in a previous article, the record origination pace brought into question fears over another equity raise similar to the one that crushed the stock back in November. Instead the company took the steps to utilize an ATM type transaction to raise equity via selling 17.2 million shares over

After the close on Wednesday, Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) reported a surprising profit beat for Q113 that sent the stock soaring in the two trading days after the report. The stock that closed Wednesday regular trading at $55.79 soared to touch $81 on Friday. Did the earnings news, while encouraging considering the history of missing earnings estimates, actually change the direction of the profit picture for the company?

The leading developer of electric vehicles has been on a roll in the last couple of months with the stock soaring from $35 in mid-March to gain more than 130% by mid-day Friday. The bullish move all started when CEO Elon Musk famously tweeted about a profitable quarter and the stock has exploded ever since that day.

Is The Future Really Any Brighter?

While the top line appears brighter for Tesla, the actual bottom line numbers expected by analysts has become

After the close on Wednesday, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) reported a surprising profit for Q113 that sent the stock soaring in after hours trading. By the time the market opened on Thursday, the stock opened down and eventually lost 4.3% for the day. As investors quickly found out from reading the details, the profits only occurred due to the collection of $20.8 million of VTEC revenues for all of 2012 that the company didn't exclude from the non-GAAP numbers.

Per the company, it is the largest provider of natural gas fuel for transportation in North America and a global leader in the expanding natural gas vehicle fueling market. Unfortunately though, that market isn't building out nearly fast enough to make this company profitable. The margins remain razor thin as Clean Energy is forced to pass along all the costs savings of using natural gas to the customers.

The

As with any company that offers software services, the ongoing shift to the cloud and on-demand services has been disruptive to revenues and profits in the short-term. The issue previously impacted Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Intuit (INTU) and now Nuance Communications, Inc. (NUAN) has been greatly impacted by the shift.

The company is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications, and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems.

Nuance trades around 52-week and multi-year lows even as stocks around the world have soared to all-time highs. The company recently rushed out a weak Q213 report that disappointed investors by slashing full year guidance. The main culprit was a swift shift to on-demand services away from perpetual licenses. This move causes revenue to be recorded over an

This article is a continuation of a monthly series highlighting the top net payout yield stocks that was started back in June, 2012 (see article). The series highlights the best stocks for the upcoming month. Please review the original article for more information on the net payout yield concept.

April Returns

Below are two charts highlighting the monthly returns of the top 10 stocks from April (see list here). Due to limitations with YCharts, the chart was broken into the Top Five and Next Five lists.

The Top Five stocks had a disappointing month after a strong April. American International Group (AIG) and Kohl's (KSS) had solid gains for the month that easily beat the 2.4% gain of the S&P 500. Both Seagate Technology (STX) and DirecTV (DTV) performed ok with flat results for the month. The biggest problem was that Motorola Solutions (MSI)

A common theory in the technology world is the concept of investing for the future. Typically, these phases take place prior to a company going public, but lately several large-cap techs have started campaigns to dramatically increase expenses to capture mobile growth. Ironically, the market has chosen to punish one stock while giving the other a big pass. Not to mention, the mobile transition has been a constant profit disruption to most major firms, as the initial traffic flows don't offset the lower monetization levels.

Over the last couple of weeks, both Baidu (BIDU) and Facebook (FB) have reported that margins were greatly impacted by ramped up spending for mobile. The only difference is that Facebook continues heading to recent highs while Baidu languishes at multi-year lows, appearing as if the stock might head much lower.

While investors fret over the increased costs and the transition to mobile

Every research firm and data analysis over the last couple of months suggested that Facebook (FB) is losing users especially amongst the younger generation. Reading the Q113 earnings call transcript, one gets the impression that the company has unlimited user growth ahead and no issue with the teen crowd. Why does such a dramatic dichotomy exist in the market?

While Facebook remains the dominant leader in social media, sources from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster to SocialBakers suggests that the younger generation and especially teens are quickly moving on from the site to Twitter or other social outlets. The company is desperately attempting to address the issue via numerous new products that aren't attracting enough revenue to exceed the cost of the products.

The big question is why the data doesn't match up. Everybody knows people that are no longer as active on the site. Even the company

InvenSense (INVN) has remained an incredible technology firm with huge upside potential since its IPO back in 2011. Yet the stock trades near the IPO pricing as the company has had to continuously throttle back expectations including the guidance for Q1 2014 provided on the earnings call.

As pointed out in previous articles, the maker of motion sensing technology had tons of potential held back by the inability to correctly forecast the growth potential. Prior to earnings Thursday night, the stock traded at roughly 12x this year's earnings expectation yet the company just completed a year of over 100% growth. Even after a huge gain following the strong outlook for fiscal 2014, the stock might offer the most incredible price in the market.

Q4 2013 Highlights

The company reported the following highlights for Q4:

• Net revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2013 was $55.2 million, up

Back in November, Stone Fox Capital wrote how, despite the big sell-off in the stock, the Windstream (WIN) dividend was likely safe. Unfortunately months later, investors still question the high yield as the dividend payment absorbs most of the free cash flow. While the market is obsessed with dividend payouts, the company would be fiscally sound if it would cut the dividend and use that cash to pay down debt and buy back stock down the road.

The company is a leading provider of advanced network communications to businesses nationwide while also offering broadband and phone services to consumers in rural areas.

In order to maintain the current juicy 12% dividend, the company must produce enough free cash flow to cover the cash distribution. Lately that equation has come into question with a flat revenue base as capital expenditures have soared.

Dividend Problem

On the Q412 earnings report

The utility sector has been very successful over the last two years as the Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLU) has easily outgained the S&P 500 index. The sector has been attractive to investors as the high dividends pay considerably more than the 10 Year Treasury that remains stuck below 2%. Now it is probably the time to consider utility stocks as played out, though investors shouldn't expect the stocks to crash. In fact, the stocks are likely to continue gaining and reaping decent dividends, but the likelihood of outpacing the market is greatly reduced at these levels.

Strong 2-Year Gains

For low growth stocks, the utility sector has been on fire the last couple of years. American Electric Power (AEP), Dominion Resources (D), and Duke Energy (DUK) have had phenomenal gains of over 40% during that time period, compared to the S&P 500 at 22%.

While performing research for an article on Netflix (NFLX), the constant discussion on original content made me wonder about other content generators. Especially when considering the massive valuations of entertainment content companies. As an example, nonfiction content creator Discovery Communications (DISCA) has a market value of $28B and The Walt Disney Corporation (DIS) is worth $111B. Is it possible for user generated content to ever create companies of that size?

All of those firms are vastly different from a focus of distributing content in the case of Netflix to the creating content for a vast network of cable channels at Discovery to creating films and TV shows at Disney. In general, all of the companies are involved in the creation and distribution of entertainment content that has historically had significant value creation.

All of this discussion about the value of content and push to more original content

Earlier this week noted short seller Jim Chanos made an interesting statement regarding the Netflix (NFLX) subscriber base. The content distributor recently reported strong net additions that got the market a flutter with wild fantasies of future subscriber potential.

Chanos though dosed those hopes with the interesting point that 30M subscribers tends to be the maximum case for paid services such as HBO and AOL in the past. Netflix just reported strong additions to streaming memberships pushing the total to over 29.2M or 27.9M paid. Interesting that pushed the company over the totals of HBO or if you only count paid subscribers than HBO still has a slim lead with 28.7M domestic subscribers.

Can Netflix push towards member totals dramatically above the current HBO base? Chanos says not, but infamous CEO Reed Hastings suggests otherwise.

Back To Q1 Earnings

Were the Q1 2013 earnings for Netflix actually that

The rumors are always ripe in the Verizon Wireless saga between 55% owner Verizon (VZ) and 45% owner Vodafone (VOD). The news has gone from a Verizon buyout of Vodafone's share to buying all of Vodafone and now back to buying out Vodafone's share.

The latest news leak is that Verizon has hired advisors for a bid of $100B for the Verizon Wireless stake. Could Vodafone with a $150B market cap really receive a $100B payout on its 45% stake? Actually the data suggests the value will be 20-30% higher.

The deal should be intriguing to Vodafone as the company would collect a ton of cash as Verizon hits multi-year highs and the U.S. wireless market reaches saturation. Vodafone could use the cash to flip into equity investments in European wireless assets that have been under pressure or emerging markets that have been weak the last year.

After the close on Wednesday several technology firms reported earnings with vastly different stock reactions. In the tech world, earnings season tends to be a moment of wild swings. The stock reaction can be nothing more than expectations getting out of hand and investors turning too bearish or the result of a shift in the business fundamentals. Either way, the moves highlight the problems with investors getting too bullish or bearish as most stocks tend to eventually revert to the mean average.

In the after hours action, investors got a prime example of what happens when a market leader makes a move in one direction. The likelihood exists that the stock will revert to the mean eventually and no better time exists than an earnings report. This exact scenario occurred in the earnings reports for Akamai Technologies (AKAM), Equinix, Inc. (EQIX), and Fusion-io, Inc. (FIO) on Wednesday

As natural gas prices soar this year, Chesapeake Energy (CHK) is likely the biggest beneficiary. The heavily indebted, asset rich firm will make out like a bandit if natural gas prices triple as Jeremy Grantham suggested earlier this month. As Chesapeake was its own worst enemy with an aggressive land acquisition and drilling plan over the last decade, the company might become its own best friend with a scaled back capital spending plan.

After a decade of rapid growth, Chesapeake turned into the largest independent producer of natural gas and a leading landholder in the vast majority of the important shale areas. The company has a leasehold on 15M net acres and has a reserve base of nearly 20 Tcfe.

The scaled back drilling for natural gas led by Chesapeake is leading to lower inventories of the commodity and rigs drilling for the resource at decade lows. As