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These 3 “Perfect 10” Stocks Have Plenty of Fuel in the Tank, Say Analysts

These 3 "Perfect 10" Stocks Have Plenty of Fuel in the Tank, Say Analysts

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Making sense of disparate data streams is a necessary skill for investors; stocks can shift in response to a wide range of causes, or sometimes none at all, and putting together a profitable portfolio requires understanding the factors that influence those stock movements. The forest of available data makes investing in the stock markets an intimidating endeavor.

The Smart Score makes the investor’s job easier. Pulling the latest data from the TipRanks database, this unique tool sorts the raw information according to 8 separate factors that are each known to predict future growth. Taken together, the factors are averaged and used to create a single score that indicates the likely direction the stock will move. The Smart Score is given on a scale of 1 to 10, with the higher scores indicating a higher likelihood that the stock will perform better than the overall markets in the coming months.

A ‘perfect 10’ Smart Score is a rare gem – fewer than 200 out of more than 10,000 stocks covered hold this high rating. But that high score is a clear sign for investors that here is a stock deserving a closer look. Here we give that closer look to three small-cap stocks, each with at least a 30% upside potential – and that perfect 10 Smart Score.

Intevac (IVAC)

The first company on our 'perfect 10' list today is Intevac, a manufacturer of specializing in two essential high-tech products: magnetic media processing systems and high-sensitivity digital-optical systems. Both product sets are based on thin film technology. Intevac is a major world supplier of magnetic media, with a 60% market share in the industry’s production systems. The company is the sole supplier of digital imaging systems for the US military’s night vision equipment.

Intevac saw revenue and earnings dip sharply in the first quarter, during the coronavirus crisis and associated economic downturn, but have quickly turned positive in the second quarter. Revenues gained 53% sequentially to reach $28.8 million, for a 29% year-over-year gain, while EPS moved from a 5-cent loss to a 6-cent gain. The EPS number beat the forecasts by 135%.

Chiming in from Wall Street is 5-star analyst Gus Richard of Northland Securities. Richard was impressed enough with the stock to initiate coverage of IVAC shares with an Outperform (i.e. Buy) rating and $11 price target. This figure indicates a potential upside of 80% for the coming year. (To watch Richard’s track record, click here)

Backing his stance, Richard writes, “The night-vision business is transitioning from avionics applications to ground troops driving scale and growth in this business [...] IVAC revenues have been range-bound for the last 3 years delivering roughly breakeven annual results. We believe that the combination of the IVAS night-vision program, an HDD technology transition, and new product targeting new markets, IVAC's revenue is set to grow over the next several years driving earnings acceleration..”

Overall, Intevac has a Moderate Buy rating from the analyst consensus, based on 3 reviews which include 2 Buys and 1 Hold. The stock is selling for $6.26 and has an average price target of $8.83, suggesting a one-year upside potential of 41%. (See IVAC stock analysis on TipRanks)

K12, Inc. (LRN)

Next up, we move to the education sector, where K12 is a for-profit company offering innovative curricula to school districts, individual schools, and homeschooling parents, as an alternative to older modes of instruction. K12’s products are popular among homeschoolers, and during the coronavirus crisis, with schools shut down, the company’s familiarity with remote learning gave it an advantage when marketing to traditional school systems.

During 1H20, the height of the coronavirus pandemic, K12 stuck to its historic pattern of revenue and earnings results, with Q1 and Q2 both showing sequential declines. Q2 EPS, however, beat the forecasts by an impressively wide margin of 300%, coming in at 12 cents against the 3 cents predicted. Revenues in Q2 grew 4.5% sequentially and came in at $268.9 million. These results reflected the relevance of the company’s business model and products at a time when schools are shifting to remote learning, and when homeschooling is gaining traction.

LRN shares are up 63% year-to-date, in another indication that the company is currently navigating in a favorable environment.

Alexander Paris, of Barrington Research, believes that K12 has a clear path forward over the next 12 months. He writes, “[K12] is preparing for increased student enrollment in the fall… we could see some downward pressure on revenue per enrollment, due to the ongoing COVID-19 impact on state budgets, [however] strong expected volume gains will more than offset any potential downward pressure from revenue per enrollment in FY/21… the company is positioned to deliver double-digit growth in both revenue and adjusted operating income in the coming fiscal year.”

In line with these optimistic comments, Paris sets a $60 price target, implying room for 75% share appreciation from current levels. (To watch Paris’ track record, click here)

LRN gets a Strong Buy from the analyst consensus, and that rating is unanimous, based on 3 recent positive reviews. Shares are selling for $33.39; the average price target of $55 suggests there is room for a 65% upside in the year ahead. (See LRN stock analysis on TipRanks)

Ultra Clean Holdings (UCTT)

For the last stock on our list, we move to the semiconductor industry. These chips are the heart of the modern digital age – and Ultra Clean Holdings is essential to the chip makers. Ultra Clean is a high-tech manufacturing company that designs, engineers, and builds the critical subsystems required to produce semiconductor chips, as well as other high-end digital necessities such as liquid crystal displays.

The value of UCTT’s position in the manufacturing chain can be seen by the earnings patter of the past several quarters. EPS gained steadily for the last 4 consecutive quarters, beating the forecasts in each one. This pattern held even through the height of the coronavirus crisis, with the 69 cents EPS in the most recent quarter, 2Q20, coming in 68% above the estimates. Revenues showed smaller sequential gains, but still gained over the past year; the Q2 top line stood at $344 million.

5-star Needham analyst Quinn Bolton is impressed by Ultra Clean’s ability to beat earnings forecasts and show steep growth during the coronavirus pandemic. He attributes this success to the urgent need for semiconductor chips – and therefore, for reliable manufacturing equipment.

“As global wafer fab equipment (WFE) grows and semiconductor manufacturing sector consolidates, there is a pressing need for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to consolidate the fragmented subsystems supply chain to better cope with the cyclical growth demand of WFE. Ultra Clean… should see an increasing share of content in WFE as WFE grows... UCTT is one of our favorite derivative names.”

Bolton’s review comes with a Buy rating and a $35 price target that implies an 81% upside potential over the next 12 months. (To watch Bolton’s track record, click here)

All in all, Ultra Clean has a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating, based on 2 Buys and 1 Hold. The stock’s average price target of $33.67 suggests it has a 47% upside potential from the $22.77 current trading price. (See UCTT stock analysis on TipRanks)

To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

The post These 3 "Perfect 10" Stocks Have Plenty of Fuel in the Tank, Say Analysts appeared first on TipRanks Financial Blog.

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Mathematicians use AI to identify emerging COVID-19 variants

Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants…

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Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.

Credit: source: https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23312

Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.

The framework combines dimension reduction techniques and a new explainable clustering algorithm called CLASSIX, developed by mathematicians at The University of Manchester. This enables the quick identification of groups of viral genomes that might present a risk in the future from huge volumes of data.

The study, presented this week in the journal PNAS, could support traditional methods of tracking viral evolution, such as phylogenetic analysis, which currently require extensive manual curation.

Roberto Cahuantzi, a researcher at The University of Manchester and first and corresponding author of the paper, said: “Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen multiple waves of new variants, heightened transmissibility, evasion of immune responses, and increased severity of illness.

“Scientists are now intensifying efforts to pinpoint these worrying new variants, such as alpha, delta and omicron, at the earliest stages of their emergence. If we can find a way to do this quickly and efficiently, it will enable us to be more proactive in our response, such as tailored vaccine development and may even enable us to eliminate the variants before they become established.”

Like many other RNA viruses, COVID-19 has a high mutation rate and short time between generations meaning it evolves extremely rapidly. This means identifying new strains that are likely to be problematic in the future requires considerable effort.

Currently, there are almost 16 million sequences available on the GISAID database (the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data), which provides access to genomic data of influenza viruses.

Mapping the evolution and history of all COVID-19 genomes from this data is currently done using extremely large amounts of computer and human time.

The described method allows automation of such tasks. The researchers processed 5.7 million high-coverage sequences in only one to two days on a standard modern laptop; this would not be possible for existing methods, putting identification of concerning pathogen strains in the hands of more researchers due to reduced resource needs.

Thomas House, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at The University of Manchester, said: “The unprecedented amount of genetic data generated during the pandemic demands improvements to our methods to analyse it thoroughly. The data is continuing to grow rapidly but without showing a benefit to curating this data, there is a risk that it will be removed or deleted.

“We know that human expert time is limited, so our approach should not replace the work of humans all together but work alongside them to enable the job to be done much quicker and free our experts for other vital developments.”

The proposed method works by breaking down genetic sequences of the COVID-19 virus into smaller “words” (called 3-mers) represented as numbers by counting them. Then, it groups similar sequences together based on their word patterns using machine learning techniques.

Stefan Güttel, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, said: “The clustering algorithm CLASSIX we developed is much less computationally demanding than traditional methods and is fully explainable, meaning that it provides textual and visual explanations of the computed clusters.”

Roberto Cahuantzi added: “Our analysis serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating the potential use of machine learning methods as an alert tool for the early discovery of emerging major variants without relying on the need to generate phylogenies.

“Whilst phylogenetics remains the ‘gold standard’ for understanding the viral ancestry, these machine learning methods can accommodate several orders of magnitude more sequences than the current phylogenetic methods and at a low computational cost.”


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There will soon be one million seats on this popular Amtrak route

“More people are taking the train than ever before,” says Amtrak’s Executive Vice President.

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While the size of the United States makes it hard for it to compete with the inter-city train access available in places like Japan and many European countries, Amtrak trains are a very popular transportation option in certain pockets of the country — so much so that the country’s national railway company is expanding its Northeast Corridor by more than one million seats.

Related: This is what it's like to take a 19-hour train from New York to Chicago

Running from Boston all the way south to Washington, D.C., the route is one of the most popular as it passes through the most densely populated part of the country and serves as a commuter train for those who need to go between East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia for business.

Veronika Bondarenko captured this photo of New York’s Moynihan Train Hall. 

Veronika Bondarenko

Amtrak launches new routes, promises travelers ‘additional travel options’

Earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it was adding four additional Northeastern routes to its schedule — two more routes between New York’s Penn Station and Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the weekend, a new early-morning weekday route between New York and Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station and a weekend route between Philadelphia and Boston’s South Station.

More Travel:

According to Amtrak, these additions will increase Northeast Corridor’s service by 20% on the weekdays and 10% on the weekends for a total of one million additional seats when counted by how many will ride the corridor over the year.

“More people are taking the train than ever before and we’re proud to offer our customers additional travel options when they ride with us on the Northeast Regional,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch said in a statement on the new routes. “The Northeast Regional gets you where you want to go comfortably, conveniently and sustainably as you breeze past traffic on I-95 for a more enjoyable travel experience.”

Here are some of the other Amtrak changes you can expect to see

Amtrak also said that, in the 2023 financial year, the Northeast Corridor had nearly 9.2 million riders — 8% more than it had pre-pandemic and a 29% increase from 2022. The higher demand, particularly during both off-peak hours and the time when many business travelers use to get to work, is pushing Amtrak to invest into this corridor in particular.

To reach more customers, Amtrak has also made several changes to both its routes and pricing system. In the fall of 2023, it introduced a type of new “Night Owl Fare” — if traveling during very late or very early hours, one can go between cities like New York and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Washington. D.C. for $5 to $15.

As travel on the same routes during peak hours can reach as much as $300, this was a deliberate move to reach those who have the flexibility of time and might have otherwise preferred more affordable methods of transportation such as the bus. After seeing strong uptake, Amtrak added this type of fare to more Boston routes.

The largest distances, such as the ones between Boston and New York or New York and Washington, are available at the lowest rate for $20.

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The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife

Bird flu is decimating species already threatened by climate change and habitat loss.

I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.

I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.

This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.

How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.

This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.

This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.

H5N1 originated on a Chinese poultry farm in 1997. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

The first signs

Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.

We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.

Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.

Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.

Unfortunately, our warnings were correct.

A roving sickness

Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica.

In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.

Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.

The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.

Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.

At the crossroads

Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.

Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.

It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.

Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.

Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.

A colony of king penguins.
Remote penguin colonies are already threatened by climate change. AndreAnita/Shutterstock

How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.

To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.

Diana Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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