As part of our Exclusive Biotechnology Report we spoke with Maged Shenouda, Executive Director, Health Care Group  of UBS Investment Research gave us some great insight into Large Cap Biotechnology and his top picks;

Mr. Shenouda: So right now, we like Gilead(GILD). They have a dominant HIV franchise. Their base business is doing well. We also expect upside from clinical data releases next year with a product called GS 9350, their non-protease booster, as well as elvitegravir, their integrase inhibitor. Combine that with potential changes for HIV treatment guidelines, where patients would be treated earlier at CD4 counts of 500 and less versus 350 currently. This would bring more patients into treatment. So that’s more of a shorter-term commercial upside opportunity.

Then we like Celgene (CELG). We think it’s the best growth story in biotech. Its geographic expansion outside of the U.S. is going to maintain its top-line growth at the top of its peer group. We also expect positive data releases. Specifically, we anticipate positive detailed data from the MM- 015 trial at the ASH meeting in December. We also like Human Genome Sciences (HGSI). We’re excited about the prospects of BENLYSTA, that’s its lead development-stage product for the treatment of lupus or SLE. They had a positive readout with the first Benlysta Phase III trial. We think that they are likely to have a positive readout with the second Phase III trial, called BLISS- 76, reading out in November. We also believe this is a strong acquisition target.

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Nokia NOK (NYSE) the once indomitable Finnish based wireless phone company just announced some management changes.  Nokia who has found itself with an uphill battle in today’s smartphone era is battling Apple and many of the others.  So far, its results have been nothing to brag about.  In a story hat appeared on Newsvine,

The company said Timo Ihamuotila, head of global sales, will replace Rick Simonson as the chief financial officer on Nov. 1. Simonson will head the mobile phones sector in the devices unit.

Simonson has been CFO since 2004 and will continue to be on the executive board, Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.

“After six successful years as CFO, it is great to have Rick move to such an important operational role,” Kallasvuo said. “Rick Simonson’s deep knowledge of the business and its financials will be valuable for the significant part mobile phones play in Nokia’s business.”

These changes are surely not the end of the problems facing the company.For more:Barrons Tech TraderWall Street JournalBloomberg

We recently spoke with W. Mark Motley of Foster & Motley, Inc.. Mr. Motley selects holdings by focusing on valuation, growth, quality and dividend yield. He seeks to maximize the combination of those four attributes for each company relative to its peers in its sector, and he structures portfolios on a sector neutral basis. We asked Mr. Motley about opportunities in the current volatile market;

Mr. Motley: Very much so. Less so now then we did six months ago, clearly. There were amazing opportunities then, par­ticularly in many of the small cap names back in March. Currently, we think there are still significant opportunities, even as we are in­creasingly concerned about the valuation for the overall market. But we’re still finding interesting individual opportunities. At this point, the best opportunities appear to us to be in some of the higher qual­ity, larger companies and I’m happy to talk about a number of those if you wish.

I’ll just throw out the names and then some of the average characteristics we measure for the group (yield, growth, valuation, and quality). We think there are exceptional opportunities now in Northrop Grumman (NOC); McDonald’s Corp (MCD); Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO); AFLAC (AFL) and Abbott Labs (ABT). There are others that we think look interesting now, but these are five interesting opportunities, in our view, and each is in a different sector of the market

For the details the full article is available exclusively at The Wall Street Transcript

As part of the Transportation Report we asked Natasha Boyden of Cantor Fitzgerald  to give us an overview of Marine Transportation .  She thinks the dry bulkers are certainly moving up a bit better and their rates have been falling dramatically.

Ms. Boyden: The dry bulkers are certainly moving up a little better. Their rates over the last couple of weeks have been fall­ing dramatically and I think a lot of that is due to the fact that Vale (VALE) has taken itself out of the market, is no longer putting in orders I think. But in the second half of the year, we’re certainly seeing lower iron ore imports into China, as their inventory is hold­ing steady at about 76 million tons and they certainly don’t look to be increasing that. Steel prices have fallen pretty dramatically, down about 15% in the last month, which to us does indicate a weakening in demand for the products. I think the last quarter of this year is going to be definitely not as good as the first three quarters, which I think took everybody by surprise. I think the worry here is if they drop another $10,000 it will be at breakeven again or below. It’s certainly something we’re watching very closely

The fact that the dry bulk space has been behaving so well is really, in our opinion, much to do with the Chinese stimulus pack­age. It was about $586 billion in 2009 and 2010, about 50% of that is for infrastructure. Very clearly that would stimulate domestic steel demands, et­cetera. It’s a question of whether or not we’re seeing real demand or we’re seeing stimulus demand. Scrapping levels were pretty high in the first half of 2009, but they have slowed down since. Deliveries have been much less than anticipated. We expect that to reverse later this year.

Back in July, Liberum placed Jeffrey Peek, CEO of troubled business lender CIT, on the CEO Watch list.  Early today news came out that Peek, Chairman and CEO, would resign his position at the end of the year.  Too often these days top executive changes take place very late in the game.  Let’s see if CIT can find a way out of its troubles and bring in a leader that can help its circumstances.  According to a story by Alan Rappeport for the Financial Times,

Peek’s resignation comes a little more than a month after CIT extended his contract by another year, signaling that he would lead the company through its restructuring. In his new contract, which was set to expire in September 2010, Mr Peek was prohibited from any compensation not permitted under the terms of the government’s troubled asset relief programme and lost the privilege of using the corporate aircraft.

Hopefully more companies will take a cue from CIT’s troubles and set in place succession plans and at a minimum, make management decisions more quickly when the circumstances require changes.

For more:

Bloomberg

As part of our most recent 43 page  Investment Strategies Report we conducted an interview with Walter B. Todd III of Greenwood Capital Associates, LLC.  Mr. Todd invests in large cap growth stocks and starts his selection process by determining which sectors will be overweight, underweight or market weight. He then delves into the industry groups within the sectors and selects individual names for the portfolio. Because he has a fairly concentrated portfolio he also looks at relative opportunity or opportunity cost of holding one name versus another and if he sees a better opportunity within an industry or sector he will move out and switch around the holdings. When asked aboutthe sticks he found attractive and reasons for buying them Mr. Todd gave us some great insight ;

Mr. Todd: Well, in the energy sector stocks tend to move together, with the exception of the refiners, which are a little bit different animals, it’s a pretty homogeneous sector relative to some others. But we have a good blend of different industry groups within energy portfolio. Schlumberger (SLB) is clearly a world leader in the services area, in the oil and gas services business. That’s a name that we like there.
We’ve  recently added ConocoPhillips (COP) in the inte­grated space, as the stock has under performed on a year-to-date basis and we think unjustly so, so we felt like that was a good op­portunity to put some money to work within energy. Within finan­cials, we like Morgan Stanley (MS). We think the upheaval that occurred on Wall Street and the competitive landscape that is left leaves Morgan Stanley and very few other firms like Goldman their competitors have gone by the wayside. So we like Morgan Stanley in the financial space and have been adding to that stock.
Industrials, Emerson Electric (EMR) is a holding that we’ve had for a number of years. It’s a little bit more con­servative company, but this is a company that’s raised their dividend I think consistently every year for the past 50 years or so. They have a very strong balance sheet, a very good management team. Again, a little bit slow on the uptake, but we think it’s going to come back and catch up, so to speak, with some of these other industrials.
Then on the technology side, you’ve had a great run in a lot of areas in this space, but we still think some of the semi names, we have Intel (INTC), and Texas Instruments (TXN) there, have some more room to go, as we get earnings revi­sions like we’ve seen over the past couple of months in both those names. Qualcomm (QCOM) is a name we recently added to as well and they are really leveraged to the mobile device market, of course, with their products and we think that’s a trend is going to continue to grow as more people go mobile with their data needs.

Our featured interview this week is with Federal-Mogul Corporation (FDML)

The complete interview with Jose Maria Alapont, President and CEO, is now available.

Federal-Mogul Corporation is a leading global supplier of powertrain and safety technologies, serving the world’s foremost original equipment manufacturers of automotive, light commercial, heavy-duty, industrial, agricultural, marine, rail, off-road and industrial vehicles, as well as the worldwide aftermarket. The company’s leading technology and innovation, lean manufacturing expertise, as well as marketing and distribution deliver world-class products, brands and services with quality excellence at a competitive cost. Federal-Mogul is focused on its sustainable global profitable growth strategy, creating value and satisfaction for its customers, shareholders and employees. Federal-Mogul was founded in Detroit in 1899. The company is headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, and employs nearly 39,000 people in 36 countries.

Our featured Interview this week is Mid Penn Bancorp, Inc (MPB)

The complete interview with Rory G. Ritrievi President and CEO, is now available.

Mid Penn Bancorp, Inc., is the parent company of Mid Penn Bank. Mid Penn Bank is a local, community bank with a strong, stable earnings history which continues to provide solid performance and growth. Large bank mergers continue to disrupt the Capital Region of Pennsylvania, giving small, well-run community banks such as Mid Penn Bank, the opportunity to provide services to a number of dissatisfied retail and business customers.

Todd Wallack, a reporter for The Boston Globe, wrote a terrific piece that appeared this morning on the search for a new CEO for Bank of America to replace Ken Lewis upon his retirement.  Wallack examines the pressure to look for a candidate from outside the bank.  He also mentions a long list of potential candidates from within the bank and outside. While much of this is a repeat of what has already been discussed their are some real nuggets of information in the piece. If you are interested in BofA, the story is a must read.

As part of our Banking Report we conducted a Roundtable Forum with Anthony Polini,Senior Vice President, Financial Services, Raymond James & Associates and Christopher Nolan, Vice President Equity Research, Maxim Group who had some differing views ;

Mr. Polini: Like I said before, I’ve never been more bullish. I’ve been following the banks since 1985 and in many ways banks are all in the same boat. I think some boats are going to rise a little more over the next three to six months. But we’re still looking at the big macro picture. I’m very eager to find out what happened to consumer delinquencies this quarter to see a follow through, if you will, on early signs of positive news on the consumer credit front. The commercial loan losses and NPAs are probably at least six months away from peaking. So we still have a difficult environment. Like I tell people, you can make money walking around in Beverly Hills buying bank stocks and over the next year I think you’re going to make a lot of money, but you’re not walking in Beverly Hills, you’re walking in my old hometown, Flushing.

 

Mr. Nolan: My only “buy”-rated stock is SVB Financial (SIVB), with a price target $44. It’s a bank focusing on the technology inventory capital sector and has very little commercial real estate exposure. The company is basically trading at about 1.5 tangible book. The stock has increased by 40% or so since reporting second-quarter earnings. I tend to think that because the stock is not really tied too much to commercial real estate, has a very strong liquidity position, I think credit quality is stabilizing and earnings are positioned to go to outperform peers. That’s my only “buy” rating, but I’m favorably disposed to two “hold”-rated stocks. The first is Signature Bank (SBNY), which is a New York-based bank using a private banker model, targeting small and mid-size companies in the New York metropolitan area. It has been an extremely successful core deposit growth story, and it has limited commercial real estate exposure, which really dates back to 2008. So it doesn’t really have too much legacy