Every day, the sun rises on Wall Street, and a plethora of professional analysts wake to issue new opinions on stocks. Here at the Fool, we use our "This Just In" column to examine some of these picks-- and the track records of the firms behind them -- so individuals can make better investing decisions.
In addition to following professional banks, anyone can use Motley Fool CAPS to monitor the collective opinions of more than 130,000 members, many of whom demonstrate better investing insight than published analysts do.
Enough top-performing CAPS members have turned bullish on Actuate (Nasdaq: ACTU) recently to upgrade it from its long held four-star rank to a more formidable five stars. A total of 505 members have given their opinion on the business software provider, with many of them offering analysis and commentary explaining the recent optimism.
Actuate provides business analytics software and services helping businesses analyze operations and organize day-to-day activities. The company competes with behemoths like IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), and SAP (NYSE: SAP) -- companies that tend to buy up smaller players to grow customer base and advance into new niches.
Despite basically flat revenue growth in the first quarter, the company achieved a boost in earnings per share and increased its cash balance by nearly $5 million. Its open source business information application, BIRT, is growing in popularity, with Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) recently selecting it to enhance its Secure Access Control System. BIRT business brought in $3.5 million in the quarter, an increase of 32% over last year, and it expects its BIRT-related business to increase by 30% this year, contributing $20 million in revenue.
Tech giants like Oracle, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) have shown signs of improving results over recent months, signaling a more stable environment for business services firms. And many CAPS members see a big future for Actuate as businesses look to increase efficiency and take advantage of new open source technology and applications that generate more value.
To see what the very best CAPS analysts are saying now about Actuate -- as well as other winning stocks they are picking -- head on over to CAPS and have a look. The community research and resources in CAPS are totally free, unlike analyst opinions reserved for paying clients.
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