Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day Highlights: Sunoco Logistics Partners, Iron Mountain, Nokia, Siemens and China Mobile
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – January 7, 2013 – Zacks Equity Research highlights Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL) as the Bull of the Day and Iron Mountain (IRM) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Nokia Corporation (NOK), Siemens AG (SI) and China Mobile Limited (CHL).
Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2678.
Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:
Buoyed by a continued robust operating performance and favorable growth prospects, we are maintaining our Outperform recommendation on Sunoco Logistics Partners (SXL). Recent results have been driven by strength in its crude pipeline system and terminals facilities.
Importantly, the partnership has grown its cash distribution for 29 consecutive quarters. With its stable fee-based revenue, geographically-diverse assets and strong business fundamentals, Sunoco Logistics offers investors an opportunity to capture income growth through steadily rising cash distributions and capital appreciation. Therefore, we are confident of the partnerships total return potential.
As such, we rate units of Sunoco Logistics as an attractive investment and maintain its Outperform recommendation. Our $59 price objective reflects a 2013 P/E multiple of 18.0x.
Iron Mountain (IRM) reported a dismal third quarter negatively impacted by lower-than-expected organic growth in the core services coupled with contraction in activity-based service revenue and decline in recycled paper prices. The company provided a tepid outlook.
Although the company's decision to convert into an REIT would definitely increase shareholders value and reduce the tax burden, we continue to believe that the results will be negatively affected by sluggish internal growth, volatile foreign exchange rates and a decline in recycled paper prices. Iron Mountain has a strong product portfolio, which is helping it to expand into international territories.
However, we believe that this will not be enough to drive significant growth over the long term. Thus, we downgrade the stock from Neutral to Underperform and set a price target of $28.00.
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Nokia-Siemens Restructure Operations
Nokia-Siemens Network (‘NSN’) – a 50-50 joint venture between Nokia Corporation (NOK) and Siemens AG (SI) has decided to merge its Middle East and Africa (MEA) business into one single entity and has combined the new division with the Asia operations. According to the company, the operational rejig will allow NSN to better serve its large customers.
Following the restructuring, NSN’s operational headquarters will shrink from ten to six, which includes AMEA, Latin America, North America, and the three subdivisions of Europe. Igor Leprince, who was previously heading NSN’s Middle East business, will head the newly formed MEA division, which includes the Africa operations. Executive board member, Ashish Chowdhary will lead the Asia, Middle East and Africa (:AMEA) business which include the entire cluster of MEA, India, Asia-Pacific, China and Japan.
The transformation will help Espoo, Finland-based NSN to provide a more integrated service to its customers thereby improving its service quality across the region. Precisely, the telecom equipment manufacturer will be in a better position to deliver quality service to its multinational customers, who are expanding their operations in different countries across the AMEA.
The leading telecom equipment manufacturer — NSN has been going through a tough time for quite some time now. Though the company has a strong GSM portfolio, it lacked severely on the CDMA front, which is the most dominant network used in the lucrative North American market.
Historically, MEA has been a key market for NSN and has operations in 30 countries across the regions. The MEA region has witnessed steady demand for TD-LTE (Time Division Long Term Evolution) and FDD-LTE (Frequency Division Duplexing Long Term Evolution) based wireless broadband technologies among different carriers.
NSN has won a contract from Vodacom, which was the first operator in South Africa to launch LTE service. Moreover, in Asia, the company has won a couple of network contracts from the world’s largest operator China Mobile Limited (CHL) in the last two months.