For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – August 11, 2009 – Zacks Equity Research highlights tw telecom (TWTC) as the Bull of the Day and Loews Corporation (L) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), Verizon Communications (VZ) and AT&T (T).
Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:
We maintain our Buy rating and the same valuation target for tw telecom (TWTC), a leading provider of managed voice & data networking solutions. TWTC continues to generate sustaining revenue from large business enterprises primarily through sales of Ethernet and IP-VPN services.
This has reduced the company’s dependence on telecom carrier customers. Although the balance sheet remains considerably leveraged, we do not expect any immediate liquidity crisis since no significant debt will mature before 2013. Growth prospects for TWTC remain firm as a result of growing demand for bandwidth to implement converged IP-based networks.
The stock is currently trading near 50% discount to its 52-week high range. We believe that this weakness in share pricing may be due to overall equity market conditions which may now create a favorable investment opportunity.
Loews Corporation’s (L) second-quarter income from continuing operations came in at $0.78 per share, substantially short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate. The lower-than-expected results primarily reflect higher net investment losses.
However, underwriting performance was impressive during the quarter. A strong rebound in investment income primarily from improved limited partnership results, were also impressive during the quarter. While the spin-off of Lorillard in 2008 eliminated the company’s overhang of tobacco litigation, we think that the continuation of a stressed economic environment will have a restrictive effect on the top-line growth of the company.
As such, the shares carry an Underperform recommendation from us.
Latest Posts on the Zacks Analyst Blog:
Comcast Aggressively Positioning Docsis
Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) is aggressively deploying Docsis 3.0 technology to upgrade its existing customers to high-speed network. Docsis 3.0 (also called Wideband network) is a digital channel-bonding technique that creates one larger and faster logical pipe to support throughput of at least 100 Mbit/second. Recently, management announced that it expects to upgrade around 40 million homes and businesses of the company’s existing networks with next-generation super-fast wideband technology by the end of 2009. This revised estimate exceeds Comcast’s previous guidance of 30 million homes and businesses.
With Docsis 3.0, Comcast is now able to offer one of the fastest Internet speeds available in the market. The company has not only doubled the speed for its customers but also offers new higher-speed service plans. Offering high-speed Internet access has become essential for service providers since preference for video-on-demand (watching movie on the Internet) has increased among customers. In addition, demand for online gaming and downloading of various multimedia applications has also grown significantly.
Comcast posted solid growth in the second quarter. However, it lost 214,000 basic video customers during the period. US telecom giants are gradually expanding their fiber-optic networks to take the fight to cable MSOs. Verizon Communications (VZ) with FiOS network and AT&T (T) with U-Verse network are likely to make broader entertainment, information and communications markets highly competitive.
Get the full analysis of all these stocks by going to http://at.zacks.com/?id=5507.
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