10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014

A number of sources, from Fitch Ratings to UBS,�have decided that it's time for investors to get out of department stores. The argument is that customers are trending more toward specialty retailers, and that the benefit well for department store stocks is all but dried up. Other observers aren't sold on the idea, though, and the National Retail Federation ranks among the skeptics. Daniel Butler, a VP of retail operations with the Federation, said that department stores are actually outperforming the retail sector overall.

For investors, it may simply be a matter of being more selective. The range of department stores and performances is broad, so here are three of the bigger players, and how they stack up against one another.

J.C. Penney
At the bottom of the pile is J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP  ) . I vacillate between thinking that J.C. Penney is about to go out of business and take everyone down with it and thinking that it's about to go out of business but liquidate its real estate to generate some value for investors. Either way, things at the retailer are not working out. Last quarter, both net sales and comparable sales were down more than 16%. The company's loss per share doubled from the quarter last year.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Seneca Foods Corp. (SENEA)

Seneca Foods Corporation produces and distributes processed fruits and vegetables. It offers canned, frozen, and bottled produce and snack chips, including canned fruits and vegetables, frozen vegetables, and other food products under private label, as well as national and regional brands that the it owns or licenses, including Seneca, Libby�s, Aunt Nellie�s Farm Kitchen, Stokely�s, Read, Taste of the West, Cimarron, Tendersweet, Blue Boy, Festa, and Seneca Farms. The company also packs Green Giant, Le Sueur, and other brands of canned vegetables, as well as select Green Giant frozen vegetables for General Mills Operations, LLC under a long-term alliance agreement. Seneca Foods sells its products to grocery outlets, including supermarkets, mass merchandisers, limited assortment stores, club stores, and dollar stores; and food service distributors, industrial markets, other food processors, and export customers in 80 countries, as well as to federal, state, and local gov ernments for school and other feeding programs. The company was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Marion, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Portfolio Grader]

  Seneca Foods (NASDAQ:SENEA) shows solid improvement this week. The company’s rating rises from a C to a B. Seneca Foods produces and distributes processed fruits and vegetables. The stock currently has a trailing PE Ratio of 9.30. 

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: NetScout Systems Inc.(NTCT)

NetScout Systems, Inc. engages in the design, development, manufacture, marketing, sale, and support of unified service delivery management, service assurance, and application and network performance management solutions worldwide. It offers nGenius Service Assurance Solution, an integrated unified service delivery management platform that provides application and service performance intelligence to enable organizations to assure network and application performance and user experience. This solution?s capabilities include intelligent early warning and service visualization, packet-level forensic analysis, planning and optimization, and service and policy validation, as well as network, application, and service performance management. The company also provides Sniffer Analysis software suite that offers a direct connection to nGenius InfiniStream appliances for forensic analysis and packet data mining to exploit the information contained within network packets; and a view i nto IP network packets revealing granular information about network and application interactions, response time, and latency metrics. In addition, NetScout Systems, Inc. offers Sniffer Portable Analyzer product family that provides portable network and application analysis capabilities for field deployments. The company?s solutions support a range of enterprise information technology operations and are deployed by telecommunication service providers. It markets and distributes its products through direct sales force, as well as through strategic channel partners, including distributors, value added resellers, and systems integrators to financial, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, technology, utilities, education, and the public sectors. The company was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Chuck Carlson]  

  The brokerage likes NetScout's differentiated capabilities in highly instrumented service-aware network monitoring, troubleshooting, and analytics. It believes NetScout's potential market opportunity and focused capabilities can enable the company to take market share and further distinguish itself competitively.

Top 5 Small Cap Companies To Watch In Right Now: Mitchells & Butlers(MAB.L)

Mitchells & Butlers plc operates pub restaurants and managed pubs. It primarily operates drink- and food-led sites. The company?s restaurants and pubs brands include the Crown Carveries, Ember Inns, Harvester, Metro Professionals, Miller & Carter, Premium Country Dining Group, Scream, Sizzling Pubs, Toby Carvery, Vintage Inns, All Bar One, Browns, Nicholson?s, O?Neill?s, Alex, Village Pub & Kitchen, and Innkeeper's Lodge. As at September 25, 2010, it operated 1,909 sites, including 86 leased and franchised sites in the United Kingdom, and 43 pub restaurants in Germany. In addition, the company manages and operates its freehold and long leasehold property portfolio. Mitchells & Butlers plc was founded in 1898 and is based in Birmingham, the United Kingdom.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc.(EDU)

New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. provides private educational services primarily in the People?s Republic of China. It offers a range of educational programs, services, and products consisting primarily of English and other foreign language training; test preparation courses for admissions and assessment tests; primary and secondary school education; development and distribution of educational content; software and other technology; and online education. The company?s language training courses primarily consist of various types of English language training courses, and other foreign languages, including German, Japanese, French, Korean, and Spanish. It offers test preparation courses for language and entrance exams used by educational institutions in the United States, the People?s Republic of China, and commonwealth countries. The company also operates primary and secondary schools in Yangzhou. In addition, New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. deve lops and edits content for educational materials for language training and test preparation, such as books, software, CD-ROMs, magazines, and other periodicals. It distributes these materials through various distribution channels consisting of own classrooms and bookstores, as well as third-party distributors. Further, the company offers various online education programs on its Web site, koolearn.com. Additionally, it provides consulting services to help students through the application and admission process for overseas educational institutions, as well as post-secondary educational programs to help students seek career opportunities; and operates two pre-schools. The company offers educational services under the ?New Oriental? brand name. As of May 31, 2010, it offered education programs, services, and products through a network of 48 schools, 319 learning centers, and 25 bookstores. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People?s Republic of China.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By James K. Glassman]

   New Oriental Education & Technology Group (symbol: EDU), which I recommended for 2010, gained a lovely 48% over the following 12 months. For the past year, however, New Oriental -- which dominates the market for private educational services in China (55 schools and 726 learning centers) -- has taken a dive, as have many Chinese stocks. It's now close to its early-2010 price, even though revenues have doubled.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Harvard Bioscience Inc.(HBIO)

Harvard Bioscience, Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets apparatus and scientific instruments used in life science research in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities, and government laboratories in the United States and internationally. The company?s products target ADMET testing, and molecular biology and liquid handling application areas. Its ADMET testing products comprise absorption diffusion chambers that measure the absorption of a drug into the bloodstream; well equilibrium dialysis plates for serum protein binding assays; organ testing systems; infusion pumps for infusing liquids; behavioral products used in neuroscience, cardiology, psychological, and respiratory studies to evaluate the effects of situational stimuli, drugs, and nutritional infusions on motor and sensory, activity, and learning and test behavior; cell injection systems; ventilators; and electroporation products. The company also distributes various devices, instruments, and c onsumable items used in experiments involving cells, tissues, organs, and animals in the fields of proteomics, physiology, pharmacology, neuroscience, cell biology, molecular biology, and toxicology. It sells its ADMET testing products under the Harvard Apparatus, BTX, KD Scientific, Hugo Sachs Elektronik, Panlab, and Warner Instruments brands names. Its molecular biology and liquid handling products include molecular biology spectrophotometers, DNA/RNA/protein calculators, multi-well plate readers, amino acid analysis systems, liquid dispensers, gel electrophoresis systems, and consumables primarily consisting of pipettes, pipette tips, autoradiography films, gloves, thermal cycler accessories, and reagents. The company sells its products to researchers through catalogs, its Website, and distributors, as well as directly in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, and Canada. Harvard Bioscience, Inc. was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Hollisto n, Massachusetts.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Australia Oriental Minerals NL (AOM.AX)

Australia Oriental Minerals NL engages in the exploration and production of oil and gas properties. The company holds binding agreements to acquire 80% working interests in the South Kozha and Karagan oil-fields located in Kazakhstan. It also has a joint venture agreement with Silver Mines Ltd for the Kiawarra EL 6269 tenement to explore for silver, lead, zinc, tin, and gold mineralization; and a joint venture with SmartTrans for the Mount Mackenzie Prospect, which covers 3 tenements to explore for gold, copper, lead, zinc, and silver located in the in the South Connors Arch Province, Queensland. Australia Oriental Minerals NL is based in Adelaide, Australia.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Petrobakken Energy Ltd. (PBN.TO)

PetroBakken Energy Ltd. operates as a light oil exploration and production company in western Canada. The company primarily engages in the exploration and development of oil and natural gas. It holds interests in various development drilling locations, including Bakken light oil resource locations and Mississippian light oil conventional locations, both in southeast Saskatchewan; Cardium light oil resource locations in central Alberta; and Montney and Horn River natural gas resource locations in northeast British Columbia. The company was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. PetroBakken Energy Ltd. is a subsidiary of Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: MICRO FOCUS ORD GBP0(MCRO.L)

Micro Focus International plc provides enterprise application management solutions worldwide. The company offers software that allows companies to develop, test, deploy, assess, and modernize business-critical enterprise applications. Its product portfolio includes i.Sight, an application portfolio management and analysis tool that enable strategic planning, and application overhaul and modernization; Caliber, a enterprise software requirements definition and management tool, which is used to drive the development and testing of applications to the exact and changing needs of end users; and Rumba, a terminal emulation and user interface modernization tool that streamlines and modernizes key business processes. The company also offers Enterprise, a platform modernization tool, which modernizes application portfolios and platforms; StarTeam, a software change and configuration management tool that tracks changes across the software development lifecycle; and VisiBroker, a CO RBA middleware and application server. In addition, it provides Micro Focus Developer COBOL and software developer tools to modernize business-critical enterprise applications; and Silk software test management, test automation, and performance testing suite. Further, the company offers professional services comprising value profile day services; test process, portfolio, language, platform, and resource modernization services; test data management; value assurance; health check; field development solutions; software process improvement; project review services; customer care and education; and training services. Micro Focus International plc was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Newbury, the United Kingdom.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Dumont Nickel Inc. (DNI.V)

DNI Metals Inc., a development stage company, engages in the exploration and development of mineral properties in Canada. The company primarily explores for diamond, molybdenum, nickel, uranium, vanadium, zinc, copper, cobalt, silver, gold, scandium, lithium and thorium, and other rare metal deposits. Its principal properties include the Alberta polymetallic black shale SBH property comprising 36 metallic and industrial mineral permits located in the Athabasca region, northeast Alberta; and the Attawapiskat Diamond property consisting of a 16 square kilometer land position in the Attawapiskat region located in the James Bay Lowlands in Ontario. The company was formerly known as Dumont Nickel Inc. and changed its name to DNI Metals Inc. in May 2010. DNI Metals Inc. was incorporated in 1954 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

10 Best Specialty Retail Stocks For 2014: Capstead Mortgage Corporation (CMO)

Capstead Mortgage Corporation operates as a self-managed real estate investment trust. It invests in leveraged portfolio of residential mortgage pass-through securities consisting of adjustable-rate mortgage securities issued and guaranteed by government-sponsored enterprises or by an agency of the federal government. The company qualifies as a real estate investment trust for federal income tax purposes. It generally would not be subject to federal corporate income taxes if it distributes at least 90% of its taxable income to its stockholders. The company was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.