1. 1. 3 Tech Stocks That Soared This Week
2. 2. 3 tech stocks that beat the market, August 3 August 7 2015
3. 3. Windstream finally caught a break this week.
4. 4. The telecom services operator beat the Street in Thursday's second-quarter report. Analysts expected a net loss of $0.61 per share on sales of roughly $1.4 billion. Windstream proved the analysts right on the bottom line, but delivered a far smaller loss of only $0.48 per share. The company is moving away from low-margin consumer sales and leaning in towards more profitable business-class accounts. What's that other stock on our chart, shadowing Windstream's every move at a distance? That's Communications Sales & Leasing, an asset management REIT recently spun off from Windstream. By the numbers
5. 5. Since the CS&L split, Windstream shares have traded 52% lower. CS&L also fell 28%. Many investors are still unsure exactly how the new two-company structure is supposed to work, and not convinced that it was a good idea in the first place. In short, CS&L is supposed to manage the old Windstream's network equipment and real estate assets, while the new Windstream company leases access to CS&L's assets and focuses on selling telecom services. In theory, CS&L should be a slower-growing but safer bet, sporting generous dividends. Windstream should offer more flexibility and growth options, but less stability and lower dividend yields. In practice, so far, Windstream's shares have indeed been less stable than CS&L, but with a 13% to 11% score also offers a higher dividend yield. Theory vs. practice
6. 6. First Solar bounced 19% higher on Tuesday, thanks to a huge earnings surprise. President Obama unveiling ambitious clean energy plans sure didn't hurt the solar power veteran, either.
7. 7. Second-quarter earnings landed at $0.93 per share, up from a $0.62 loss per share in the year-ago quarter. Sales more than doubled to $896 million. Analysts were only expecting earnings of $0.36 per share on sales near $752 million. If that's not a home run, I just don't understand baseball. More numbers
8. 8. Many large and expensive projects from quarters past are starting to pay off for First Solar these days. The company is also selling, restructuring, and otherwise shaping up its non-core assets. 8point3 Energy Partners, a newly formed joint venture between First Solar and SunPower, is absorbing many of these tricky resources and projects. 8point3 has not yet reported its first quarterly results. Keep your eyes on that for clues to how First Solar's client installation projects are working out. Meanwhile, First Solar simply doubles down on making and selling solar panels. What's going on?
9. 9. Travis Hoium, the Fool's resident clean energy expert, says that First Solar's never-ending turnaround is getting somewhere. The 8point3 business is helping, and so is a general trend towards more and larger solar power installations. Meanwhile, President Obama just announced a massive initiative to adopt clean energy sources such as wind and solar systems. The so-called Clean Power Plan will subsidize clean power installations on a grand scale, and will touch companies like First Solar in a very direct way. The green power revolution that's always waiting right around the corner? This time, Obama is making sure that it will arrive soon. Industry trends: Going up
10. 10. Finally, NVIDIA absolutely crushed second-quarter earnings and revenue targets.
11. 11. The chip designer's sales was supposed to fall 9% year over year, according to its own guidance and analyst projections. Instead, revenues rose 5% to $1.15 billion, beating Wall Street's consensus by 15%. On the bottom line, adjusted earnings rose 13% year over year to $0.34 per share. The Street view stopped at $0.21 per share. Mind you, these are adjusted earnings. Among these adjustments, NVIDIA backed out a charge of $0.19 per share for shutting down its wireless networking operations. The company would have preferred to sell this division, but failed to find a buyer and simply gave up on the unprofitable project instead. There was no magic bullet behind this surprise. Instead, NVIDIA delivered sharp execution across all markets and segments. Looking ahead, management also guided third-quarter revenues 7% above the current Street view. NVIDIA vs. the Street
12. 12. "We remain excited about our business prospects." "Gaming continues to accelerate, and 4K, VR, Windows 10, and a pipeline of exciting games will lift it further. GPU accelerated data centers are expanding. Deep learning is a new, exciting application. And the market for car computers is expanding. We have excellent positions in each of these growth markets." -Colette Kress, NVIDIA CFO Food for thought Image source: NVIDIA.
13. 13. A little-known tech company responsible for finally putting an end to credit cards could hand its investors life-changing profits. And a revealing investor alert from The Motley Fool has the full story!