Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014

J.C. Penney� (NYSE: JCP  ) potentially destroyed huge amounts of shareholder wealth last week with a 44% dilution of shareholders in what could be management's last chance to return the company to relevance with close to $1 billion in new cash. Just a few weeks prior,�Clean Energy Fuels� (NASDAQ: CLNE  ) issued $220 million in convertible notes, paying 5.25% interest to bondholders while also seeing CEO Andrew Littlefair buy almost $1.5 million in shares.�

While dilution through new share offerings and the accumulation of debt can both be detrimental, but not always. What was the result of J.C. Penney and Clean Energy Fuels' recent actions, and what should shareholders look for?

Paying for growth
Clean Energy is in full growth mode with its "America's Natural Gas Highway," and its use of convertible notes to raise capital, while not directly dilutive, still carries the potential to dilute shareholders if the notes are converted to shares. Per the press release:

Top Small Cap Stocks To Buy Right Now: Hasbro Inc.(HAS)

Hasbro, Inc. engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of games and toys. The company principally provides children?s and family leisure time and entertainment products and services. It offers various games, including traditional board, card, hand-held electronic, trading card, roleplaying, and DVD games, as well as electronic learning aids and puzzles. Hasbro?s toy products include boy?s action figures, vehicles and playsets, girl?s toys, electronic toys, plush products, preschool toys and infant products, electronic interactive products, creative play products, and toy related specialty products. The company also licenses certain of its trademarks, characters, and other property rights to third parties for use in connection with consumer promotions and for the sale of noncompeting toys and games, and non-toy products. It offers its products primarily under PLAYSKOOL, TRANSFORMERS, NERF, MY LITTLE PONY, LITTLEST PET SHOP, TONKA, G.I. JOE, SUPER SOAKER, MILTON BRAD LEY, PARKER BROTHERS, CRANIUM, AVALON HILL, TIGER, FURREAL FRIENDS, BABY ALIVE, STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, and WIZARDS OF THE COAST brand names. The company markets its products to various customers, including wholesalers, distributors, chain stores, discount stores, mail order houses, catalog stores, department stores, and other retailers, as well as Internet-based e-tailers. It has a strategic licensing agreement with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), which provides EA with the worldwide rights to create digital games for various platforms, including mobile phones, personal computers, and game consoles, as well as; and a strategic relationship with Universal Pictures to produce approximately three motion pictures based on certain of company?s brands. Hasbro sells its products through its own sales force and distributors primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and South America. The company was founded in 1923 and is headquartered in Paw tucket, Rhode Island.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Udovich]

  With Christmas almost here, it�� a good time to take a closer look as toy stocks like mid caps Hasbro, Inc (NASDAQ: HAS) and Mattel, Inc (NASDAQ: MAT) plus small cap JAKKS Pacific, Inc (NASDAQ: JAKK)to see whether their performance may warrant any of them as investor stocking stuffers. After all and if you have small children, you probably own some of the toys produced by these toy stocks. However, these same stocks are also facing headwinds or their share of troubles as children increasingly opt to play with video and computer games rather than the more traditional games and brands these toy stocks have focused on. Then again and near the end of November, Piper Jaffray analyst Stephanie Wissink was quoted as saying:

Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014: StoneMor Partners L.P.(STON)

StoneMor Partners L.P., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the ownership and operation of cemeteries in the southeast, northeast, and west regions of the United States. It offers funeral and cemetery products and services in the death care industry. The company sells interment rights, caskets, burial vaults, cremation niches, markers, and other cemetery related merchandise; provides opening and closing that is the digging and refilling of burial spaces to install the vault and place the casket into the vault; and various other services, including the installation of other cemetery merchandise and the perpetual care related to interment rights. It also offers various funeral-related services, such as family consultation, the removal of and preparation of remains, and the use of funeral home facilities for visitation. As of December 31, 2011, it operated 274 cemeteries, including 253 own cemeteries in 26 states and Puerto Rico; and owned and operated 69 funeral homes in 18 states and Puerto Rico. StoneMor GP LLC serves as the general partner of the company. StoneMor Partners L.P. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  On Tuesday, StoneMor Partners (NYSE: STON  ) will release its latest quarterly results. The key to making smart investment decisions on stocks reporting earnings is to anticipate how they'll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise. That way, you'll be less likely to make an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to news that turns out to be exactly the wrong move.

Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014: China Nepstar Chain Drugstore Ltd (NPD)

China Nepstar Chain Drugstore Ltd. operates retail drugstores in the People?s Republic of China. The company?s drugstores provide pharmacy services and other merchandise, including prescription drugs; over-the-counter drugs; nutritional supplements, such as healthcare supplements, vitamins, minerals, and dietary products; herbal products, including drinkable herbal remedies and packages of assorted herbs for making soup; and private label products. Its stores also offer personal care products, such as skin care, hair care, and beauty products; family care products, including portable medical devices for family use, birth control products, and early pregnancy test products; and convenience products, such as soft drinks, packaged snacks, other consumables, cleaning agents, and stationeries, as well as seasonal and promotional items. The company operates its stores under the China Nepstar brand name. As of December 31, 2009, its store network comprised 2,479 retail drugstores located in approximately 71 cities in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Shandong, Hunan, Fujian, Sichuan, and Hubei provinces, as well as in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Beijing municipalities of the People?s Republic of China. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Shenzhen, the People?s Republic of China.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Garrett Cook]

  Non-cyclical consumer goods & services shares dropped around 0.20 percent in today’s trading. Top decliners in the sector included K12 (NYSE: LRN), China Nepstar Chain Drugstore (NYSE: NPD), and Du Pont (NYSE: DD).

Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014: ICL Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL)

ICL Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL) is an Israel-based company, engaged in the fertilizer and specialty chemical sectors. The company operates in three segments: Fertilizers, Industrial Products, and Performance Products. The Fertilizers segment is engaged in the production of standard, granular, fine red and white potash from three sources, as well as in the production of phosphates, such as phosphate rock, phosphoric acid, fertilizers and animal feed addictives. The Industrial Products segment produces flame retardants, such as brominates and organ phosphorus; elemental bromine, and other chemicals. In addition the Performance Products segment produces specialty phosphates, such as technical, food grade and electronic grade phosphoric acid, phosphate salts, food additives and wildfire safety products, as well as alumina and other chemicals. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Gwen Ackerman]

  Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL), the fourth-largest potash producer in the world by sales, is weighing on the Tel Aviv benchmark stock index on concern the government will exact higher royalties amid a global oversupply.

• [By Claudia Maedler]

  In Israel, the TA-25 Index (TA-25) gained 1.9 percent at the close in Tel Aviv as Israel Corp. jumped 9 percent, the most since July 2009, to 1,755 shekels. The shares soared along with those of its Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL) unit, which advanced 6.4 percent on speculation that a possible change in ownership of Russian potash producer OAO Uralkali could help stabilize prices of the crop nutrient.

Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014: BIND Therapeutics Inc (BIND)

BIND Therapeutics, Inc., incorporated on May 19, 2006, is a clinical-stage nanomedicine platform company developing Accurins, its targeted and programmable therapeutics. Accurins are designed with specified physical and chemical characteristics to target specific cells or tissues and concentrate a therapeutic payload at the site of disease to enhance efficacy while minimizing adverse effects on healthy tissues. Its drug candidate, BIND-014, is in Phase II clinical trials for non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC, and metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

Accurins represent the evolution of targeted therapies and nanomedicine. Accurins are polymeric nanoparticles that incorporate a therapeutic payload and are designed to have prolonged circulation within the bloodstream, enable targeting of the diseased tissue or cells, and provide for the controlled and timely release of the therapeutic payload. The four components include Targeting ligands, Stealth and protective layer, Controlled-release polymer matrix and Therapeutic payload. The Company focuses to use its medicinal nanoengineering platform to develop Accurins in several therapeutic areas, with an initial focus on the treatment of various types of cancer. In addition, the Company entered into collaboration agreements with several biopharmaceutical companies to develop and commercialize Accurins that are based on its collaborators��therapeutic payloads. The Company�� programs include BIND-014, solid tumor accurin and hematologic cancer accurin.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Udovich]

  If you have not been watching the biotech sector lately, you should start paying attention as the sector along with small cap biotech stocks like Cell Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: CTIC), BIND Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: BIND) and TNI BioTech (OTCMKTS: TNIB) continue to produce a steady stream of good news for investors thanks to positive industry trends. Moreover, Ophthotech Corp (NASDAQ: OPHT), Foundation Medicine Inc (NASDAQ: FMI), Evoke Pharma and Fate Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: FATE) are this week's biotech IPOs that will no doubt be watched closely by Wall Street and industry observers in general. With that in mind, consider the following biotech news or recent articles about the industry and the small cap players in it:

• [By Anna Prior]

  Bind Therapeutics sa(BIND)id a collaboration with Amgen Inc.(AMGN) has been ended after both companies agreed not to pursue an option to jointly develop a molecularly targeted cancer therapy. Bind Therapeutics shares fell 11% to $11.50 premarket.

• [By John Udovich]

  Yesterday, small cap biotech Acceleron Pharma Inc (NASDAQ: XLRN) rose 9.76%�plus shares are up 183.6% for retail investors since its September IPO, meaning its worth taking a closer look at the stock along with the performance of other biotech IPOs like BIND Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: BIND), Ophthotech Corp (NASDAQ: OPHT) and Foundation Medicine Inc (NASDAQ: FMI) which also debuted at the same time.

Best Clean Energy Companies To Buy For 2014: Compagnie Generale des Etablissements Michelin SCA (ML)

Compagnie Generale des Etablissements Michelin SCA (Michelin SCA) is a France-based company, which is mainly engaged in the manufacture and distribution of tires for a variety of vehicles. In addition, it publishes maps and guides, and offers digital products and services. The Company�� main activity is the production of tires for passenger cars, two-wheeled vehicles, trucks, agricultural equipment and aircraft, among others, which are sold through such distribution divisions as Euromaster in Europe and TCI in the United States. Michelin SCA also offers travel assistance services, including maps and guides, and digital navigation products and services, via ViaMichelin. In addition, the Company produces a number of lifestyle products, such as car and bike accessories, work, sport and leisure gear, and collectibles. The Company is active domestically and abroad. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Corinne Gretler]

  Michelin & Cie. (ML) increased 2 percent to 70.55 euros after UBS raised Europe�� largest tiremaker to buy from neutral, citing improved cost positions that enable more competitive pricing and higher profits.