Every year there are some stocks that surprise investors and analysts in a pleasant way. Due to intelligent business strategies or favorable market conditions, some stocks have risen from the ashes and have bounced back this year to present great investment opportunities for investors. Their resilience and strategies to come back into business have been a pleasure to watch. Here, we are going to discuss about three such companies that are surely back with a bang during this year.
Improving quality of stocks and efficient cost management
The first company in the list of stocks that have woken up from a deep slumber is Accuride Corporation (ACW, Financial). This company manufactures tires and similar products for heavy vehicles like trucks. The company had a tough time during the 2008 recession. It was riddled with so many financial and operational issues that it filed for bankruptcy during the recession. During 2010, the company did withdraw its bankruptcy petition; however it still faced rough weather as there were lots of issues in its operating units which led to lower quality of products, heavy losses and reduced demand.
The company got into correction mode quite quickly. During last year, it focused exclusively on quality improvement. As a first step toward this move, operation units that were not so effective were closed out and only the big units were focused upon. Accuride also spent considerable time and effort in bringing down costs so that it could improve its margins. Due to extra focus on quality, demand for its products began to slightly improve in the market. The market has also been quite favorable as oil prices are down at the moment. With novel strategies and improved demand for products, Accuride is looking like a good investment opportunity currently. The share price trend is as follows:
Good dividends and favourable external factors
The last few years have not been so great for the integrated oil company, BP Plc. (BP, Financial). Just like any other oil company, the crash in prices has created a dent for BP in its margins. However, the company, a merger of British Petroleum and Amoco, has a lot of operations to fall back upon like refining, distribution and marketing of oil, in addition to making petrochemicals. BP faced a severe setback during 2010, the year in which issues relating to Macondo well disaster started surfacing. After almost four years of legal battles, things will finally start to fall back in place during this year, which will have a positive impact on the performance of BP. The other major problem that BP faced was because of its heavy investment in Russia. With the Russian economy and currency going for a downward swing, BP has been adversely affected. For 2015, things are likely to improve even if there is a slight growth in the Russian economy. Share prices will start to improve, giving huge promises to investors. Currently, investors are quite happy with the 6% dividend yield offered by BP. The share price trend of BP for the last few years is seen below:
Market competency in Terrestrial Low Power Service
The next company that we are going to see is a satellite communication service provider that filed for bankruptcy during 2002 and bounced back in 2004, thanks to a 65% stake by Thermo Capital Partners. We are talking about GlobalStar Inc. (GSAT, Financial), a company that was formed due to the partnership of Qualcomm (QCOM, Financial) and Loral Space & Communications (LORL, Financial). After the $600 million investment of Thermo, GlobalStar’s satellite network improved remarkably. It is also giving its competitors a run for their money, through the use of a new Wi-Fi service known as TLPS (Terrestrial Low Power Service). The success of this service has been so great that great companies like Amazon (AMZN, Financial) and Cisco (CSCO, Financial) have taken a liking for the same. Though this service will have its own risks, analysts believe that GlobalStar will deliver good results during 2015. The share price trend for the last few months of the company is seen below:
Conclusion
Patience is one of the key virtues of investors. If you want to have long-term benefits, you must be careful to keep holding the right stocks and believe that market factors will turn the tide in their favor. The above stocks have had some very tough years in the past. However, they are looking promising for 2015, thanks to certain favorable market factors and effective business moves.
