It's rarely been easy for Groupon or its shareholders since going public about two and a half years ago. Even before Groupon became a publically traded company, the first of what would be several accounting questions and irregularities arose. Analysts lambasted the antics of former Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason, and were less than enamored with its easily copied business model.

Despite its inauspicious beginnings and the eventual ouster of Mason, Groupon is slowly but surely reinventing itself into a multidimensional e-tailer, while still dominating its original deals market. Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofsky is making a lot more right moves than wrong, including the recent decision to ramp up its marketing efforts for the first time in three years. The reaction? Groupon's stock price closed down nearly 2% yesterday following Lefkofsky's announcement.

Some background
If there were any questions about Mason's tenure at Groupon, they were emphatically answered both by Mason himself after getting the boot as CEO, and investors following the news. Mason's response to being ousted?

I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding -- I was fired today. If you're wondering why ... you haven't been paying attention.

Obviously, Mason was not engaged in the process of turning Groupon's fortunes around.

Investors also made it clear what they thought about Mason's departure in late February of last year. The next day, investors drove Groupon's stock price up nearly 13%, effectively saying, "good riddance." Unfortunately, Lefkofsky and the Groupon team still can't seem to win over analysts or investors, despite successfully implementing much-needed changes.

The man with a plan
When Groupon co-founder Lefkofsky took the permanent CEO position last August, one of his first orders of business was to ramp-up non-coupon revenues. Those analysts that blasted Groupon early on were right about one thing: Groupon's online deals are easily copied, and there were -- and still are -- some serious players. Amazon.com's LivingSocial and Google Offers are the biggest, but they're hardly alone.

Thankfully, Lefkofsky was already on board with the notion that Groupon needed to expand beyond deals and develop multiple revenue streams. The biggest, and the most scrutinized of Groupon's growth efforts, is its Goods unit. Once again, short-sighted investors lamented the decision to build out its e-commerce operations, citing concerns about margins.

Groupon's overseas sales got a jump-start when Lefkofsky spent $260 million to acquire Ticket Monster from financially strapped LivingSocial. Groupon also acquired online fashion retailer Ideeli for $43 million, instantly expanding its online retail presence. Long-term, both acquisitions are perfectly suited for Groupon's growth aspirations.

More recently, Groupon announced it was returning to TV with a new ad campaign to support its efforts to become a full-fledged e-commerce site. The result was a nearly 2% drop in share price to close out the week. Why? Because Lefkofsky let the cat out of the bag: When you increase overhead to drive long-term growth, a negative impact on the bottom line will follow.

Lefkofsky isn't the only one who recognizes the need to diversify Groupon's offerings. After a tough 2013, Amazon is still waiting to get some kind of return on its LivingSocial investment. According to CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy, LivingSocial is going to turn its fortunes around by expanding beyond online deals to generate alternative sources of revenue. And the $260 million from Groupon for Ticket Monster? O'Shaughnessy intends to invest the money to grow LivingSocial's online offerings -- a plan that Groupon initiated over two years ago.

Final Foolish thoughts
Groupon is a perfect example of short-term investors who drive the share price for a long-term growth stock. Lefkofsky is spot-on in his efforts to move beyond daily deals, ramp up marketing, and integrate its new acquisitions. These are the steps that build long-term value for shareholders, even though many investors seem intent on focusing on Groupon's next week, instead of next year.

No increased cancer risk from Fukushima. That was the finding by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation in a report titled "Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami."

While many scientists and government officials were digesting the UN's earlier IPCC report on the growing need to combat climate change, the new report on radiation post-Fukushima came in rather quietly. Word about no discernible changes in the rates of cancer and other diseases after the Fukushima nuclear tragedy is welcome news to the uranium mining sector, which has seen the price of spot uranium firm up at around $34 per pound. Also, valuations of mining stocks have methodically moved higher since the start of the year. I expect this to continue on the heels of the IPCC report's major global call for lower carbon levels in order to reverse negative impacts of climate change. Therefore, I continue to favor Energy Fuels , Denison Mines , and Cameco . 

In the United States, prostate cancer is now the most common type of malignancy detected in men. Even more concerning is that prostate cancer has crept up to the second-leading cause of cancer-specific deaths among men in the U.S., according to recently released statistics from the American Cancer Society -- although it lags behind lung, liver, stomach, colorectal, and oesophageal cancer globally.

Prostate cancer cases have also been increasing markedly since the 1970s, although this trend could be a statistical artifact from a concomitant increase in screening rates. Put simply, more men began getting screened in the 1990s, potentially leading to a higher detection rate. Indeed, incidence rates are known to be significantly higher in Western countries, where regular screenings are common, compared to developing nations.

What's important to understand from an investing perspective is that the global prostate cancer market is presently valued at over $26 billion, and this figure is expected to rise to over $50 billion as soon as 2017. Consequently, we have seen several new prostate cancer drugs hit the market over the past four years, with dozens of others entering clinical trials. So let's take a deeper look at five biotechs leading this wave of new innovation.  

New generation of commercially available therapeutics
Johnson & Johnson's  hormome therapy Zytiga, developed by its subsidiary Janssen Biotech, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, in 2011. Zytiga is indicated as a treatment for castration-resistant metastatic prostate cancer and works by blocking androgen production -- a common therapeutic target among prostate cancer hormone therapies in general.  Zytiga is now a market leader among prostate cancer drugs, raking in $1.7 billion in sales in 2013. That said, Medivation's hormone therapy Xtandi, approved in 2012, appears to be cutting into Zytiga's double-digit sales growth. Time will tell how this head to head competition plays out. 

Source: Prostate.net. 

Dendreon's  personalized prostate cancer vaccine Provenge became commercially available in 2010 for the treatment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic, castration-resistant metastatic prostate cancer. The drug has struggled to gain market share, and sales have been particularly rocky since the approvals of Xtandi and Zytiga. On the bright side, Dendreon will launch Provenge in Europe this year, which could help boost sales.

Source: urosciences.com

In 2013, the FDA approved Bayer Pharmaceuticals'  radium isotope Xofigo as a treatment for men with prostate cancer that has spread to their bones and have stopped responding to hormone therapy. Clinical studies showed that Xofigo extended life span by three months on average, but some countries have balked at covering the drug because of its considerable cost. As a more specialized drug, Xofigo probably won't see the eye-popping sales numbers of Zytiga, but the drug could be a decent revenue earner in its own right due to the sheer size of the prostate cancer market. 

Clinical products to watch
On the clinical front, there are several promising therapies under development. For instance, the DNA-based vaccine-maker Inovio Pharmaceuticals  is developing a prostate cancer vaccine dubbed "INO-5150," currently at the preclinical stage of development. INO-5150 is another immunotherapy approach, but the biological mechanism is entirely different from Provenge.

Seattle Genetics  is teaming up with Progenics Pharmaceuticals, among others, to develop antibody drug conjugates, or ADCs, to treat prostate cancer. Seattle Genetics has both an early and mid-stage ADC under development for prostate cancer. The mid-stage candidate has faced some setbacks because of toxicity issues, which may hinder further development. Overall, it's important to bear in mind that this is only a small sampling of the clinical candidates for prostate cancer.

Foolish wrap-up
Prostate cancer has become an epidemic for men in the U.S., and the new generation of therapies could radically change the standard of care for this disease. Currently, Zytiga is locked in a fierce battle with Xtandi for the front-runner position, but Provenge has also seen sales grow modestly recently. In my view, this dynamic market shows that doctors are experimenting with their new found options, keeping any one drug from gaining a stranglehold on the market. Looking ahead, the continued growth of the prostate cancer market suggests there is ample room for even more new therapies. As such, you may want to dig deeper into these five biotechs helping to fight the battle against prostate cancer. 

For electric vehicles to gain mass acceptance, there must be a seamless charging infrastructure in place. Some countries are well ahead of the U.S. in this space, but California-based ChargePoint is doing its best to change that.

The company is partnered with many major automakers, including Ford , General Motors . Many of these vehicles can guide you directly to a charging station that's not currently being used. On the other side of the equation, ChargePoint counts thousands of businesses and municipalities as a partner -- pretty much anyone with a parking lot is a potential customer.

ChargePoint was at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In this video, CEO Pat Romano chats with the Fool's Rex Moore about his company -- which has a 70% share of all networked public charging stations, and operates on four continents.

A full transcript follows the video.

Pat Romano: ChargePoint is in the business of providing charging infrastructure to companies that want to offer charging to employees and customers, in parking lots. Any business that has a parking lot is a potential customer of ours.

Even though we look like a hardware company, we're primarily a subscription cloud services company, where we take care of everything necessary to offer charging services to drivers so the businesses that put these in don't have to worry about payment, managing the device, setting up who can access the device or not -- it's a few mouse clicks on a website.

It's just super simple for someone to offer charging services -- because remember, this is not the primary business of the buildings that are on these parking lots. The primary business is something else; selling you food, selling you ... whatever place you work.

The second thing that we do is we view drivers as a customer, as well. Although we don't charge drivers anything directly for being part of ChargePoint and carrying a card and having an account, we collect money from drivers on behalf of these station owners.

So, if the station owner wants to charge for charging -- they can offer it for free -- but if they want to charge something, we deal with collecting the money from the driver's credit card and giving it to the station, or making that whole process super simple.

What it looks like is a crowd-funded network, in that every little business that has a parking lot buys the infrastructure, subscribes to ChargePoint, and the drivers see it as one unified network. That's what we do.

If you're lucky enough to have access to Google Fiber, you may soon see a new offer from Google. The web search giant is reportedly in talks with Verizon to offer mobile phone services. The agreement would make Google an MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator, renting wireless network capacity from Verizon.

As if Google wasn't already enough pain in the side of AT&T or the cable companies, a wireless service from Google would give customers even more reasons to switch services.

If you can't beat 'em ...
The rumor claims Google is in talks with Verizon, but if Google really wants to pursue this project, it would likely approach AT&T as well. Both companies have suitable networks, and Google can easily fill in dead-spots with its own Fiber WiFi network as it only operates in a few markets. In this way, Google can play the two biggest carriers in the U.S. against each other.

A company the size of Google could attract a significant audience, meaning winning the bid for the project could mean a good amount of revenue for a wireless company. What's more, Google's penchant for offering best-cost options -- which is exactly what Fiber Internet and video services are -- could attract customers that typically go to smaller carriers.

Verizon ought to be Google's first choice, considering the strength of its network. AT&T isn't far behind Verizon, however, and in bigger cities the two are on par with one another.

The irony is Google will offer a service that competes directly against Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-Verse. All three would offer Internet, video, and wireless -- with the established carriers offering landline service as well. Adding wireless to the Fiber bundle could attract profitable bundle customers away from AT&T and Verizon, but if a company's going to offer up its network capacity to Google, it might as well be your company.

Why does Google want to be your carrier?
Google's potential entry into wireless service is an interesting move, to be sure, but it makes a lot of sense. Although MVNO's a typically hard to profit from, Google could use the service as a loss leader. There are several ways Google could profit by offering complementary services and products.

First, Google could offer the service as an add-on to Fiber subscribers. This could push more consumers toward Google's premium gigabit Internet and video services, which the company and analysts expect to be profitable. At the same time, it will allow Google to build out its fiber network, making its MVNO more efficient in using WiFi hotspots instead of the more expensive wireless network.

Another important aspect of the strategy is that Google will get to control the smartphones it offers, likely placing emphasis on its own Nexus line and other phones that support Google's Android strategy. While a lot of Android OEMs have tweaked Android to differentiate their products, Google is none too happy about that. Running its own network will give Google better control over how smartphones implement Android.

With the growing trend of mobile consumers using stand-alone apps over the mobile web, Google needs to find a way to get more of its apps onto smartphones and get people using them. The ubiquity of YouTube has made it quite successful on mobile, but with hundreds of email, navigation, and local search apps, Google has quite a bit of competition in the app market.

A (very) long-term opportunity
Google is being very patient with Fiber. While the company expects the project to become profitable in the long-term, it's not in a hurry to roll it out to the entire world. It's being very selective in establishing new markets, and the same is true of this rumored MVNO service.

Last year, AT&T and Verizon brought in revenue of $130 billion and $120 billion, respectively. Verizon's acquisition of Vodafone's 45% stake in Verizon Wireless earlier this year, means the opportunity is actually bigger for Google. Of course, Google is a long way from offering nationwide service and may be content to offer service where it's most profitable to build its network. Still, Google has the potential to gain billions of dollars in additional revenue.

Investors love stocks that consistently beat the Street without getting ahead of their fundamentals and risking a meltdown. The best stocks offer sustainable market-beating gains, with robust and improving financial metrics that support strong price growth. Does Yahoo! fit the bill? Let's look at what its recent results tell us about its potential for future gains.

What we're looking for
The graphs you're about to see tell Yahoo!'s story, and we'll be grading the quality of that story in several ways:

• Growth: Are profits, margins, and free cash flow all increasing?
• Valuation: Is share price growing in line with earnings per share?
• Opportunities: Is return on equity increasing while debt to equity declines?
• Dividends: Are dividends consistently growing in a sustainable way?

What the numbers tell you
Now, let's look at Yahoo!'s key statistics:

YHOO Total Return Price data by YCharts

Source: YCharts.
*Period begins at end of Q4 2010.

YHOO Return on Equity (TTM) data by YCharts

Source: YCharts.
*Period begins at end of Q4 2010.

How we got here and where we're going
Yahoo!'s score hasn't changed from last year, as it earned the same four out of seven possible passing grades it picked up in its previous assessment. The company's revenue continues to erode, and when coupled with decelerating revenue growth from its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, things are beginning to look a bit grim. However, Yahoo! shareholders have enjoyed strong growth over the past couple of years, and the stock has hit peaks not seen since before the financial crisis. Is this rebound sustainable, or will the flaws in Yahoo!'s business ultimately doom its hopes of long-term survival? Let's dig a little deeper to find out.

Yahoo! recently posted market-topping revenue and earnings per share in its fourth quarter, despite losing digital ad share to fellow online giants Google and Facebook over the past few years. Yahoo! also offered promising revenue guidance for the first quarter, which is a rare bright spot for a company that's long been written off as less than the sum of its parts. Fool contributor Adrian Campos points out that Yahoo! has been preparing for a comeback in search engines, perhaps challenging Google's dominance -- it currently holds over two-thirds of the search market. Yahoo! may have plans to build its own search engine, but in the meantime it continues to leverage a long-term search and advertising partnership with Microsoft and its Bing search engine.

According to tech columnist Kara Swisher, Yahoo! might try to develop a mobile-oriented search engine to compete with Google News for ad revenue by providing a hassle-free ad experience. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer has noted that smartphone usage jumped by 27% year over year in 2013, and approximately 3.8 billion Internet-connected devices are expected to be online by 2017. It's easy to talk about developing a new search engine, but history has shown how extraordinarily hard it can be to dislodge an entrenched search leader -- Microsoft has thrown billions into Bing (and lost billions in the process) without ever managing to significantly change the search landscape to Google's detriment. The number of paid clicks, the price per click, and the price per ad sold on Yahoo!'s search platform has also been in decline over the last few quarters.

Meanwhile, AOL's Adap.tv could pose serious threats to Yahoo!'s video-advertising revenue, even though this ad segment is projected to grow from $4.1 billion in global sales in 2013 to $9.2 billion in 2017. Marissa Mayer also plans to restrict ccess to popular services such as Fantasy Sports and Flickr to Yahoo! logins only, which will block millions who now use either Facebook or Google accounts. The walled-garden approach may boost engagement in the short run, but it poses a greater risk of attrition to similar services should Facebook develop its own (both Google and Facebook already have free photo-hosting services).

Fool contributor Brian Nichols notes that Yahoo! will be one of the biggest beneficiaries from Alibaba's highly anticipated IPO. Yahoo! owns approximately 24% of Alibaba -- China's equivalent to a combination of Amazon.com and eBay -- which has an estimated market cap of $150 billion, or about four times the size of Yahoo! itself. According to Bloomberg, Yahoo! will sell off some of its Alibaba stake, which could be worth as much as $37 billion.

Putting the pieces together
Today, Yahoo! has some of the qualities that make up a great stock, but no stock is truly perfect. Digging deeper can help you uncover the answers you need to make a great buy -- or to stay away from a stock that's going nowhere.

Samsung , the second largest vendor of tablets, just announced an update to its mainstream Galaxy Tab lineup. While it's known that Intel wasn't going to be included in the higher-end Galaxy Tab Pro lineup, there was still hope that Intel could have at least found its way into at least one of the Galaxy Tab 4 designs. But that didn't turn out to be the case, as Samsung gave Intel the boot. What's going on here?

Samsung's refreshed Galaxy Tab family. Source: Samsung. 

Two (major) reasons to lose a design: performance and cost

Generally speaking, to win a design, a component vendor has to satisfy one of the two following criteria:

• Given a specified performance or feature set, offer the part with the lowest price.
• Given a price, offer the part with the best performance and features.

If you look at Samsung's tablet lines, you'll see that it's segmented into three major product brands:

• Galaxy Note (8, 10.1, and 12.2 inches)
• Galaxy Tab Pro (8, 10.1, 12.2 inches) -- this is a Note that's slightly thinner but lacks a stylus
• Galaxy Tab (7, 8, and 10.1 inches)

If you'll notice, (1) and (2) are more or less the same product with a slight tweak, but (3) is a completely different price and features category. The Note and Tab Pro are meant to go head-to-head with premium devices such as Apple's iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina Display, while the standard Galaxy Tab is a more mainstream product line. For Note and Tab Pro, Samsung probably wanted the best performance it could afford, while for the Tab it was fine with getting a given performance level as cheaply as possible.

Intel probably lost on price ... for lack of a suitable part
There's little doubt that Intel bid for this socket with its Bay Trail family of chips, but it's also very likely that even with the platform bill-of-materials contra-revenue offset that Intel offers, Intel's part didn't come in as cheaply as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 did. Further, on top of the non-integration-related bill-of-materials problems, the Snapdragon 400 is more tightly integrated, which means that if Intel really wanted to play, it would have probably had to provide an obscene amount of contra-revenue to cover the connectivity and cellular pieces.

Intel's CEO demonstrating SoFIA, Intel's first highly integrated SoC with both apps processor and comms. Source: Intel. 

Something else to consider is that Intel's Bay Trail is really in the same performance class as the Exynos 5 Octa and Snapdragon 800 chips found in Samsung's higher-end Tab Pro and Note tablets. If Samsung wanted that class of performance in these devices (and it probably didn't -- Samsung wants to upsell to the Tab Pro/Note), it could have either employed Exynos 5 Octa or Snapdragon 800 and had similar CPU performance, higher graphics performance, and a lower bill-of-materials cost.

Foolish bottom line
Intel is still likely to see success in tablets this year, particularly as it enables the smaller Chinese and Taiwanese players with competitive parts, but to win a company like Samsung -- which has close ties with Qualcomm and its own silicon teams -- Intel's parts need to be unequivocally better. And as nice as Bay Trail is, it just doesn't fit that description. It's too expensive and powerful for Samsung's low-end tablet line, and too weak for the high end. Fortunately for Intel, Samsung has no monopoly on the Android tablet market. 

MarketSnacks Fact of the Day: Brazil's World Cup stadium construction sites are "on track" to kill 600 workers per year.

As originally published on MarketSnacks.com

Google just split its stock into two classes, issuing a stock dividend that gave original Google holders shares of a new class of stock. What does it mean for your portfolio?

In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, goes through the mechanics of the Google split. Dan notes that most splits give you a greater number of identical shares rather than a new class of shares, but Google was interested in retaining control in the hands of its founders. Dan suggests that because most individual shareholders don't make much of their voting rights anyway, the real difference is for institutional investors who wield substantial power in non-majority-controlled companies. With Facebook , LinkedIn , and many other companies introducing multiple classes of stock to maintain control, Google's move isn't anything new, and Dan notes that having to split tax basis between the two classes of shares could be the most complicated thing shareholders have to do in response.

Although tax day is just nine short days away, that still leaves plenty of time for investors to make a qualifying investment in their individual retirement account.

For those of you who have a Traditional IRA, if you've yet to hit your contribution limit of $5,500 in 2013 then you have until April 15 to do so. Best of all, Traditional IRAs allow for an upfront tax deduction based on the amount of your contribution (based on adjusted gross income), which could help lower your 2013 tax liability. For the remainder of you with Roth IRAs, your contribution, while not tax-deductible upfront, will be allowed to grow tax-free over a lifetime, which may ultimately offer many investors a much larger benefit than an upfront tax deduction.

Source: Zack McCarthy, Flickr.

Last week we glimpsed at a myriad of last-minute IRA selections, pointing out how these companies could grow over time for both risk-averse and risk-willing old and young investors. Today, we're going to stick with the concept of last-minute IRA ideas, but with a twist. Instead of focusing on the combination of growth and dividend yield, I'm focused solely on delivering a high sustainable yield for income-seeking investors.

The criteria I looked for were pretty straightforward:

• A yield above 5%.
• A propensity to maintain or raise its dividend.
• A highly sustainable payout structure.
• A market valuation in excess of $300 million.

The end result was an arbitrarily picked five-stock portfolio for your IRA that, if invested in equal portions, has the current potential to yield 6.5% on an annual basis. Put another way, if these yields and stock prices remained stagnant, you could double your money about every 11 years on dividend income alone.

Let's take a closer look at the five companies I believe could be the key to success for high-yield income seekers.

Alliance Resource Partners : 5.8% yield
First we have Alliance Resource Partners, a master-limited partnership in the coal production space. Before you freak out about a coal producer delivering sustainable profits understand that as an MLP Alliance Resource has a favorable tax structure which helps lower its costs, and also consider that it differs from its peers by locking in long-term contracts numerous years ahead. The result is that very little of Alliance Resource's production is exposed to current market prices which are currently under pressure, helping add cash flow consistently to Alliance Resource Partners' bottom line.

In spite of coal's swoon, Alliance Resources has delivered 13 consecutive record annual profits and has boosted its dividend in 23 straight quarters (its payout has more than doubled in those 23 quarters). With a yield of 5.8% and a sustainable payout ratio of 66% based on Wall Street's estimated 2014 EPS, Alliance Resource Partners appears to be the real deal for income investors.

New York Community Bancorp : 6.3% yield
When we're talking big dividends, it should come as no surprise to find one of the financial sector's most consistent payers among the crowd, New York Community Bancorp. Having not cut its dividend throughout the financial crisis, New York Community Bancorp delivered another strong fourth-quarter report in January, with a 15.3% return on average tangible equity, and a 9.4% improvement on held-for-investment loans despite a 23 basis-point year-over-year decline in net interest margin. However, don't let its shrinking net interest margin scare you, as its only real weakness was due to a number of prepayments signaling the improving credit quality of its clientele.

With consistency being king for this savings-and-loan giant, New York Community Bancorp has been pushing out $1 per share annually for close to a decade. Although I wouldn't anticipate any dividend hikes anytime soon as it's in the market to make a large purchase, I don't believe there's anything to worry about with regard to its 6.3% yield, either.

Energy Transfer Partners : 6.8% yield
Tired of the natural up-and-down nature of the oil and gas drilling and refining sector? There's an easy solution to that: play the middle ground!

Nederland terminal. Source: Energy Transfer Partners.

Energy Transfer Partners is a midstream energy company that handles the transportation, transmission, and storage of energy assets such as oil and natural gas. With the past decade yielding record shale deposits on land, and the Gulf of Mexico offering drillers a bevy of energy assets deep below the surface, the need to store and transport all of these assets is only going to grow over time. The smartest way to play this energy boom is with the basic need of infrastructure, not the actual volatile assets like oil and natural gas themselves.

Inclusive of its acquisitions, Energy Transfer Partners' revenue basically tripled in 2013 to $46.3 billion from $15.7 billion in the year-ago period as its operating income improved by low double digits. As Energy Transfer Partners benefits from improved oil & gas production it could even see its dividend get raised beyond its current yield of 6.8%.

FLY Leasing : 6.8% yield
Aircrafts aren't cheap -- and both the airline industry and FLY Leasing know this -- which is why more and more airlines are choosing to lease aircrafts over the course of a few years rather than purchase new planes outright. The advantage is often seen in both ends of the spectrum, with lower upfront costs for the airline and probably better fuel economy as well. For FLY it's the perfect scenario, because it allows the company to maintain strong pricing power while also giving it an opportunity to unload the aircraft when the lease is up, providing capital to purchase newer aircraft to lease out.

Clearly, FLY must be doing something right because its adjusted net income rose 10% for the full year, and it recently boosted its dividend again, pushing its yield very close to the 7% barrier. Shareholders should probably reduce their expectations of another huge dividend hike any time soon after this year, with FLY adding quite a bit of debt to its balance sheet from new plane purchases, but its current 6.8% yield is quite sustainable as is.

Source: Jodylehigh, Pixabay.

GEO Group : 7% yield
Lastly, we have one of the most basic necessities of all: prisons. With a considerably large number of Americans locked up behind bars in comparison with incarcerated citizens in other countries, the prison system in the United States has become a big money business. That's music to the ears of income investors.

Even better for investors, GEO Group officially became a real estate investment trust in early 2013, netting the company substantial tax benefits, but also requiring that it pay out at least 90% of its income in the form of a dividend to shareholders. This REIT conversion has helped push GEO Group's dividend up to the 7% mark, and it looks as if it'll remain quite sustainable, given the ongoing need for more prisons in this country.

Encana , one of Canada's largest energy producers, recently said it plans to sell some of its natural gas properties in Wyoming to a private equity firm. The company's move is part of its new strategy, which seeks to improve shareholder returns by focusing on more profitable liquids production while divesting less profitable gas-rich assets. Let's take a closer look. 

Source: Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

Encana to sell gas-rich Wyoming assets
On Monday, Encana announced it will sell its stake in certain natural gas properties located in Wyoming's Jonah field in Sublette County to Texas-based private equity giant TPG Capital for $1.8 billion.

Encana's acreage in the Jonah field comprises a producing area of about 24,000 acres, which includes 1,500 active wells and proved reserves totaling approximately 1,493 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe) as of year-end 2013. The transaction also includes an additional 100,000 undeveloped acres in the Normally Pressured Lance (NPL) area, which lies adjacent to the Jonah field.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of this year, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Encana plans to use the proceeds from the sale for general corporate purposes, including paying down debt, acquisitions, and capital investment.

What impact will it have?
Though the deal's price tag was slightly lower than analysts had expected, it still looks like an incremental positive for Encana because it will further bolster the company's balance sheet and allow it to reduce its long-term debt, which stood at $6.1 billion as of year-end 2013. It also fits well with the company's strategy of divesting less profitable gas-rich assets and focusing on liquids-rich opportunities.

This year, Encana plans to allocate roughly 75% of its capital budget toward five core liquids-rich plays, including Canada's Montney and Duvernay shales, Colorado's DJ Basin, New Mexico's San Juan Basin and the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale in Louisiana and Mississippi. These plays helped drive an 82% year-over-year increase in fourth-quarter liquids volumes, which averaged 66,000 barrels a day.

Encana is just one of several energy producers seeking to reduce their exposure to dry gas and boost liquids production. For instance, Chesapeake Energy is spending the largest portions of its capital budget on liquids-rich drilling in the Eagle Ford shale, the Greater Anadarko Basin, and Ohio's Utica shale, while Devon Energy has curtailed dry gas drilling and is concentrating almost exclusively on liquids-rich opportunities in the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford, which are expected to drive significant growth in cash flow this year.

Even Ultra Petroleum , a predominantly gas-focused producer like Encana, is shifting away from dry gas drilling. Last year, the company shelled out $650 million to scoop up oil-rich assets in Utah's Uinta Basin, where recent drilling results have exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. With expected returns in Utah of around 500%, Ultra foresees 40% growth in EBITDA and cash flow this year.

What's next for Encana?
Encana's new strategy, which involves selling off non-core assets, cutting spending wherever possible, improving capital efficiency, and boosting liquids production, is off to a good start. The company's balance sheet and liquidity position have improved markedly, while liquids production has risen sharply in just a matter of months.  

By 2017, Encana expects to generate 75% of its upstream operating cash flow from liquids. If Encana can successfully navigate this transition toward liquids, cash flow growth should accelerate sharply over the next few years. Assuming wellhead gas and oil prices of $4 per Mcf and $90 per barrel, respectively, Encana expects to deliver 10% compound annual growth in cash flow per share through 2017.

Still, delivering on these promises won't be easy and will depend crucially on the company's ability to deliver solid performance from its five core liquids-rich plays. That's why investors should keep a close eye on the company's progress in these plays, including appraisal results, drilling economics and capital efficiency improvements, and the rate of liquids production growth. 

Tobacco companies have seen their shares rise over the last two weeks as rumors popped up about possible merger and acquisition activity. The latest rumor had Reynolds America buying Lorillard , combining the number two and three players in the U.S. tobacco market. This combination would take on the market leader Altria and create a duopoly for the American tobacco market. While a deal could be quased due to possible antitrust issues, investors should continue to pour money into the three companies to chase high dividend yield

Taking on a giant
A rumored deal to combine Reynolds and Lorillard would create a company with 41% market share in the United States. This would put the company at better odds against Altria, which commands 51% with its strong brands like Marlboro. The combined Reynolds and Lorillard company would hold brands like Camel and Newport.

I don't see a deal between the two companies passing. If a deal does go through, it would likely come with the No. 2 and No. 3 players having to sell off brands to make the merger complete. This would give the combined company an even smaller market share than 40%.

Lorillard growing
In the fourth quarter, Lorillard saw sales grow 2.3% to $1.74 billion. For the full fiscal year, total sales grew 4.9% to a record $7.0 billion. More impressively, Lorillard saw its market share increase for the 11th straight year to 14.9%. Lorillard has been helped by the success of Newport and also being a key player in the e-cigarettes market.

In the fourth quarter, Lorillard had a 48% market share of the ever growing e-cigarette market. Total e-cigarette sales grew 39% to $54 million. For the full fiscal year, e-cigarettes represented $230 million. While this represented around 3% of Lorillard's annual sales, it is the segment that is spurring the Reynolds merger rumors and also the greatest source of upside for investors.

Lorillard became the first of the big three tobacco companies to join the e-cigarette market when it acquired blu eCigs. The company paid $135 million to acquire the company in 2012. Blu has seen its market share start to shrink as others join the market. In the last 16 weeks, blu had a share of only 25.5%, hurt by the national rollout of VUSE.

Reynolds looking to VUSE for growth
Reynolds has strong brands in Camel and Pall Mall, which each have a market share around 9%. The company's Grizzly chewing tobacco has a large 30% market share. Reynolds saw declining sales in the fourth quarter and full year. The company reported sales of $2.04 billion in the fourth quarter, which was a decline of 1.9%. Full-year sales declined less than 1% to $8.24 billion.

Reynolds also has looked to alternative forms of smoking for growth. The company's VUSE digital vapor leads the Colorado market in terms of share. VUSE, which is currently available in Colorado and Utah, is expanding into national distribution. After four months in Colorado, the brand was in 1,800 retail outlets, which shows the strong growth of the brand and how nationally it can be a force to reckon with.

Chasing yield
Cigarette stocks have long been known for their strong dividend yields. Despite years of up and down sales, due to fewer smokers and increasingly tough regulations, cigarette companies have remained faithful to paying out strong dividends.

Lorillard currently yields 4.6% and already raised its quarterly payout at the start of 2014. Reynolds offer a dividend yield north of 5% and continues to raises its quarterly payout one to two times a year. Market leader Altria continues to be the best yielding stock of the three with a dividend yield at 5.2%. The company continues to increase its dividend and has also rewarded investors with spin-offs of Kraft Foods and Philip Morris International.

Conclusion
The e-cigarette market tripled to $1.5 billion in 2013. The market now expects e-cigarettes to see sales double annually through 2018 and 10% a year through 2028. By 2028, the market could see sales of $124.5 billion and the overtaking of conventional cigarettes. 

Lorillard and Reynolds America both offer key e-cigarette brands in blu and VUSE. Altria also acquired the Green Smoke brand and continues to look for additional entries in the e-cigarette market. Investors can continue to chase small over the counter stocks in the e-cigarette market or make the safer bet with the three big tobacco giants. These three companies already have strong relationships with vendors and key distribution deals that can fend off competitors. Investors will be rewarded with high dividend payments along the way. 

The U.S. military has a reputation as a somewhat secretive organization. But in one respect at least, the Pentagon is one of the most "open" of our government agencies. Every day of the week, rain or shine, the Department of Defense tells U.S. taxpayers what contracts it's issued, to whom, and for how much -- all right out in the open on its website.

So what has the Pentagon been up to this week?

DoD is budgeted to spend about $6.2 billion a week on military hardware, infrastructure projects, and supplies in fiscal 2014. (A further $5.6 billion a week goes to pay the salaries and benefits of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen.) So far this year, the Pentagon has announced contracts worth approximately $36.78 billion, including just $2.64 billion awarded over the past week. In both cases, that's less than half what we'd ordinarily expect to have been spent by this point.

 And what did the generals get for their (read "our") money?

Better GPS service for the military ...
The week's biggest contract award went to Lockheed Martin , which won a $246 million addition its cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to build the Air Force's constellation of "Global Positioning System III" satellites. Specifically, this money will fund work on Space Vehicles 07 and 08 under the project, with work expected to continue on "07" through April 1, 2018, and Oct. 1, 2018, on Space Vehicle 08.

GPS III is America's next-generation satellite system, designed to take the place of America's current GPS constellation. When complete, it will improve position, navigation, and timing services and provide advanced anti-jam capabilities for the military. Location tracking is said to be three times more accurate than current GPS system, and signal strength for the military will be three times more powerful than the present system.

... and more bombs to be guided by it
In a complementary contract win, Boeing was awarded a contract Tuesday to perform up to $80 million worth of work on GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions ("JDAMs" in military parlance, "smart bombs" to the rest of us) for the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Boeing will be working to upgrade and improve guidance on the smart bombs, and performing work on software integration, aircraft integration, and upgrading the hardware as well.

Floating the boats ...
Another of the week's big contracts went to privately held AMSEC LLC, which won $188 million from the Navy to perform a raft of database and related software program support for the U.S. Navy. AMSEC will be identifying "material condition discrepancies" among Navy warships, updating and maintaining configuration and availability report database systems, and helping out also with onboard training and curriculum development for sailors. These funds will pay for AMSEC's services through April of next year.

... and flying the robots
A smaller, but still potentially rewarding, $44 million contract modification went to Northrop Grumman , which has been asked to deliver to the Navy five of its MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicles, plus a ground control station to run them. These robotic helicopters will be used as part of the Navy's Vertical Take-off and landing tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program for improving the Fire Scout's airborne endurance and "rapid deployment capability effort." Delivery is expected to be made by the end of next year.

Bill all that you can bill
Meanwhile, back on solid ground, the Pentagon has awarded advertising giant Interpublic Group's subsidiary McCann World Group an extra $196 million to run its advertising/recruiting campaign. The funds will pay for "a full range of professional marketing and advertising services in support of a nationwide advertising campaign for recruitment and retention programs throughout the Army."

So despite a generally slow week for contract awards, there were still some sizable winners. Tune in next week, and we'll see if overall spending picks up its pace, or if the year-to-date slowdown in spending really has become the new normal at the Pentagon.  

Photo credit: Flickr/Lindsey G

Oil and gas companies from around the world are planning to spend $15 billion to drill new wells in the Bakken shale this year. This money is being spent in an attempt to unlock even greater riches. In fact, according to oil and gas industry analyst Wood Mackenzie the Bakken and Three Forks formations still hold $118 billion in remaining value. That value will be realized as energy companies unlock the nearly 20 billion barrels of oil that are expected to be recovered over the life of the play. 

Staking a claim
Energy companies like Continental Resources  and Oasis Petroleum  have amassed incredibly large land positions in the Bakken. Continental Resources currently possesses the top land position in the play with more than 1.2 million net acres. Meanwhile, Oasis Petroleum has aggressively been growing its own land position, which now sits at more than 500,000 net acres after Oasis made a large acquisition last year. These two companies have staked some of the largest claims of the Bakken's future riches. 

That doesn't mean that smaller Bakken shale focused drillers like Kodiak Oil & Gas  or Triangle Petroleum  will be left on the outside looking in. Kodiak has staked its claim to 173,000 net acres, while Triangle Petroleum controls just shy of 94,000 net acres. Both of those positions will be used as a base to unlock the oil riches beneath. 

 

Photo credit: Flickr/Lindsay G

Spending money to make money
This year Continental Resources plans to spend just about $2.2 billion to develop its land position in the Bakken, with another $355 million spent to explore to see if there's even more oil riches on its land. A bulk of those funds will be used on developmental wells that are expected to cost about $8 million each, however, that investment should yield a rate of return of more than 40% as long as oil prices stay over $90 per barrel. 

Meanwhile, Oasis Petroleum's 2014 plan calls for it to spend about $1.4 billion this year on exploration and production activities. While most of that money will be spent to unlock the oil riches it knows are below its acreage, a portion of it will be spent to figure out ways to extract oil that many believe will never be recovered. In fact, while Wood Mackenzie and others think the industry will eventually extract 20 billion barrels of oil, there's up to 900 billion barrels of oil that's believed to be saturating these rocks. This is why Conteniental Resources CEO Harold Hamm thinks that some day new technology will eventually enable the industry to extract 45 billion barrels of oil from these formations. 

If the industry can figure out how to extract more of the oil that's trapped in the rock formations it could make the $118 billion in future profits look like pocket change. That's why we're seeing Continental Resources, Oasis Petroleum, and Kodiak Oil & Gas all spend money to do density tests. These projects test how close wells can be drilled. In Kodiak's case it's drilling its wells 600 feet apart by drilling up to 16 wells in a drilling unit. That's enabling it to extract more oil per section, which is pushing up the net present value of each drilling section as the following slide shows.

Source: Kodiak Oil & Gas Investor Presentation

Triangle Petroleum is also working on downspacing tests of its own. It currently sees potential for 8-12 locations per drilling spacing unit. However, it has noted that peers drilling close by including Oasis, Kodiak, and Continental are all undergoing 12 and 16 well density tests. This suggests that it has the potential to recover more oil from its land as well.

Investor takeaway
The bottom line here is that there's a lot of value that will be extracted out of the Bakken in the decades ahead. With at least $118 billion in future profits still to be recovered in the Bakken, its no wonder companies from around the world are flocking to the region. However, with so much oil still saturating those rocks that number could be just the beginning, which is why it's still a good time for investors to consider parking a portion of their portfolio in the energy sector.

Nobody likes paying more taxes, but as more people file their 2013 tax returns, many are seeing that their tax burden has gone up. What's behind the increases?

In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, talks about the multiple factors pushing taxes higher. Dan notes that the new 39.6% tax rate took effect for highest-income taxpayers, which also raised long-term capital gains and dividend tax rates from 15% to 20% on those taxpayers. But surtaxes on wage income and net investment income also added to tax burdens. Finally, Dan runs through provisions that reduced taxpayers' ability to take personal exemptions and itemized deductions, thereby raising taxable income and total tax due. Going forward, further hikes aren't built into the law, but new tax reform could change the landscape again.

Every week has its fair share of stocks that make huge moves. But i's not often that we can know what stocks will be making such moves before it actually happens.

Motley Fool contributor Brian Stoffel, however, has been successfully calling out stocks that would make big moves -- before it actually happens -- for over a year now. By focusing on two key variables, it's actually been a very simple exercise.

Brian doesn't think it's wise to try to time the market. Instead, he offers up these videos to let investors in certain companies know that they should prepare themselves mentally for volatility in their holdings before it actually happens.

To find out which two companies will likely be making such big moves this week, and why they'll be making them, check out the following video.

For patient investors, one of the most rewarding experiences is realizing your prior apprehension regarding a particular investment was warranted. In my case, when popular sandwich shop Potbelly went public in late 2013, the valuation seemed far too high and not at all worth the risk.

Sure, the stock soared 125% in the first few minutes of trading. But when I viewed the company as a long-term growth investment, what I saw was not at all enticing. However, with shares now sitting at 52-week lows, the time seems right to revisit the buy-and-hold case for Potbelly.

Source: Potbelly.

The 2013 restaurant trade
The timing of Potbelly's IPO made a great deal of sense. Last year, investors were craving new restaurant stocks, hoping to find the next Chipotle Mexican Grill .

Companies like Potbelly and Noodles & Company both IPO'd to great fanfare in 2013. The initial hype was enough to double the share prices of both companies on their respective debut trading sessions.

However, the story has since been anything but a success. Potbelly and Noodles both fell swiftly and significantly from their lofty valuations, proving that hype alone does not last. What matters most is growth, and in this regard both restaurant companies have not been all that impressive.

Source: Noodles & Co.

The 2014 restaurant investment?
Like most things, stepping away from an investment can be a good thing. With Potbelly seemingly left for dead by most investors, savvy long-term growth investors can begin to consider the sandwich shop at drastically reduced levels.

To determine whether the company is worth investing in, it is helpful to compare Potbelly to other restaurant stocks. The following is a breakdown of Potbelly's projected growth in 2014 compared to that of Chipotle and Noodles:

There is a reason so many investors want to find the next Chipotle, and that's because it is still one of the best restaurant companies for growing revenue. The company is projected to lead all listed competitors in growing sales over the next year. On the other hand, Potbelly is expected to lag significantly behind both Chipotle and Noodles in terms of revenue growth, and its earnings-per-share growth is nonexistent. 

Unfortunately, when we consider valuation, Potbelly does not fare much better. The company's forward P/E of 38 is higher than Chipotle's 35.6 despite having vastly inferior growth prospects and a less powerful brand. However, Noodles remains the most expensive of the three by far, with a forward P/E of 54.7.

Sub-par performance
Not surprisingly, Potbelly's low growth projections have much to do with management's inability to grow comparable-store sales significantly. In the fourth quarter, company-owned stores grew sales at a paltry 0.7%. By comparison, Chipotle's fiscal fourth-quarter same-store sales increased by 9.3%. Noodles also fared better than Potbelly, growing same-store sales in company-owned stores 4.3%.

What could be the reason for this? The answer may be simple: Potbelly is not a strong brand capable of driving robust traffic at the moment. Chipotle offers a unique and hassle-free take on fast-casual dining, and Noodles offers overwhelming diversity through its worldly menu options. Potbelly simply offers sandwiches, salads, soups, and not much else. There is no differentiation between Potbelly and local sandwich shops, which means the company is lacking brand power.

Source: Chipotle.

Bottom line
While a drastically reduced share price can sometimes signal opportunity, this does not appear to be the case with Potbelly. The company is still struggling to grow, and this is most likely a result of weak brand power.

In the restaurant space, Chipotle is still the king of growth, and Noodles is not too far behind. Accordingly, there does not appear to be a good enough reason for investors to bite into shares of Potbelly.

This is a transition year for many networks as executives begin preparing for a number of their flagship series to sign off for good. HBO (a subsidiary of Time Warner  is included in that mix, but for this weekend in particular it is less about saying goodbye and more about embracing the future.

The drama game

(Credit: HBO)

Usually a cable network has one or possibly two shows coming off the boards every season after long successful runs; this year HBO has three. With the upcoming exits of True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, and The Newsroom, the network needs to restock the shelf and possibly reevaluate which areas it wants to focus on in 2015.

The loss of those drams will leave Game of Thrones as the lone established dramatic series on the network. You can argue True Detective is also under that umbrella, but as of press time it hasn't been officially renewed, so for now Thrones is it.

It goes without saying Thrones is an amazing show to have as your new flagship drama and given that it still has another three or four good seasons left (plus a potential movie), HBO is guaranteed to have at least one stable anchor on its 2015 slate. The series has also earned three straight Emmy nominations for Best Drama and taken home the hardware in a number of other categories, securing its place as both a critical and pop culture winner.

It likely won't be the lone entrant for long though as HBO's Detective will almost certainly come back and the buzzy Damon Lindelof produced drama The Leftovers is expected to do well this summer given its pedigree (and just announced timeslot leading out of Blood's final run). HBO also has Utopia in the works, which is a drama series that will have a pilot directed by David Fincher (The Social Network) and script from Gone Girl scribe Gillian Flynn. Combined that's a nice roster and should paint an even nicer picture for the network in 2015.

A laugh track record

(Credit: HBO)

Yet many forget comedy has always been a network hallmark as well, with Garry Shandling's The Larry Sanders Show becoming the first cable comedy to earn a Best Comedy Emmy nomination. In the years since the net's had luck with shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex & the City, and Entourage, but currently it only has Lena Dunham's Girls and Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Veep on its mainstream comedy slate. Yes Looking and Getting On are also technically "comedies," but neither is going to fuel a network the way Girls and Veep do thanks to a strong combination of name recognition and award season presence. 

Speaking of Veep, this Sunday the comedy returns and is coming off a year where the show saw repeat Emmy success with both Louis-Dreyfus and co-star Tony Hale taking home acting prizes. Unlike Girls, which is more dramedy than comedy, Veep is a humor-driven series and has been embraced by the critics and a large share of the mainstream public. Still though, its episodes don't do as well on their initial airings, which average a little over a million viewers ... yet encores and time-shifted airings bump the numbers up.

While both Enthusiasm and Entourage had slightly higher numbers, Veep caught on a little quicker and has secured a Best Comedy Series nomination in both of its first two seasons. The series is only growing and looks to eventually hit the same heights as the shows that came before.

Niche vs. mainstream

With that said, HBO still needs to bolster its comedy slate and this Sunday the network will debut Silicon Valley, a new comedy from Office Space's Mike Judge, which takes a satirical look at the computer industry.

The show fits the schedule nicely as it has the benefit of Thrones as a lead-in and then Veep as a lead-out. ABC tried a similar strategy this year when it debuted Resurrection between established hits Once Upon a Time and Revenge and saw one of the season's best launches as a result. Valley won't hit the 13.5 million Resurrection did, but if it can pull 2 million viewers and then not drop off by a lot in subsequent weeks, that's probably mission accomplished.

Keep in mind, it's not that HBO can't launch a new hit comedy, it's that because of its subscription-based business model it doesn't always have to go the usual route in that quest. Since 2010, HBO has launched at least 10 comedies that only play to certain audiences -- as such, these niche series don't perform well overall. It's an experiment and one that a network like HBO can afford to take. The presence of shows like True Blood and Boardwalk Empire allows HBO to take fliers on shows like Hello Ladies or Family Tree. Yet with those mass-appeal dramas gone, the risks are now greater.

Valley is a unique project because it is still a very niche show, but the appeal of Judge and the placement between those established shows gives it a larger chance to catch on. Still Valley doesn't have to be a hit for HBO (though it would be nice) as the network has a pair of big name comedies on the horizon that are gaining buzz. 

The future

Ballers will star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who will also produce alongside friends Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg. The series will center on a group of former and current professional football players and their daily lives. In addition to Johnson, Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine, Children's Hospital), Omar Benson Miller (CSI: Miami), and John David Washington, son of Oscar winner Denzel Washington, will round out the cast.

In addition the network has The Brink headlined by Tim Robbins and Jack Black, with Jay Roach (Game Change) directing and iconic producer Jerry Weintraub behind the scenes. The comedy focuses on three incompetent men who somehow are the only people who can save the world from destruction.

Both of those shows will likely have more draw than Valley, but that doesn't mean you should write off Judge's newest project. Office Space was a genius movie and Judge will be looking to take that style of humor and translate it to the small screen.

Together this is a strong lineup for HBO and one executives hope will continue to perform well over the coming weeks. Losing so many programs in such a short time is not going to be easy to bounce right back from, but it's also something HBO has overcome in the past and should be able to do again in the future.

At NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made it quite clear that the company had no further intentions of competing in the highly integrated, cost-sensitive mainstream smartphone applications processor market. With that in mind, an obvious question to ask is whether the company would just go ahead and de-focus its development efforts on the actual cellular modem part of the equation.

Not officially
At the Wells Fargo 4th Annual Tech Transformation Summit, David Wong of Wells Fargo asked Chris Evenden, senior director of investor relations at NVIDIA, the following vis-a-vis NVIDIA's cellular baseband efforts:

David Wong: Chris ... you've exited mainstream smartphones, so where does that leave your baseband capabilities?

Chris Evenden: So we still need the baseband ... if only for automotive. I mean, connectivity is going to become increasingly important in all of those markets. So, we'll keep developing a standalone baseband, voice and data; we're not going to develop an integrated modem/applications processor. That product, you've got one target market in mind, which is mainstream smartphones.

So, we actually get two interesting tidbits of information. First is that NVIDIA does plan to continue developing its own standalone baseband chips (useful for high-end phones, tablets, and -- the star of Tegra's show -- automotive). Next -- and perhaps not surprisingly -- is that the company no longer plans to try to go head-to-head against the remaining players in the integrated apps processor and cellular baseband space.

RIP Tegra 4i
While there had been some encouraging early signs for the company's Tegra 4i (integrated apps processor and baseband), it looks as though the part ultimately failed to gain enough traction to continue developing successors. The problem here, and one that many had feared would ultimately be the case, is that this market is all about bringing in the cheapest, most integrated chip at the lowest possible cost.

NVIDIA's ill-fated Tegra 4i; we barely knew it. Source: NVIDIA. 

Note that while NVIDIA does have its own cellular modem efforts, it doesn't have in-house Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and the like to really be able to compete at the integration level with Intel , Broadcom, MediaTek, Marvell, and Qualcomm -- all of which do have this connectivity IP. NVIDIA likely could have picked up some connectivity IP with its cash hoard (and I had actually been expecting it), but it didn't happen.

Tegra 4i will apparently be NVIDIA's last integrated modem and applications processor, with no successors on tap. 

The smartphone apps processor market consolidates ... again
With NVIDIA essentially out of phones, the market essentially comes down to the players I mentioned. However, given that MediaTek and Qualcomm essentially own this market, and given that Qualcomm and Intel are dramatically outspending the remaining players in this market, the consolidation isn't over.

ST-Ericsson's NovaThor line of processors was an early casualty in mobile consolidation. Source: Wikipedia. 

Who's next?
MediaTek is currently selling a lot of product but is very vulnerable, as it appears to be significantly behind both Qualcomm and Intel in modem technology (the latter two are preparing to ship category 6 LTE-Advanced modems while MediaTek won't have a shipping category 4 LTE modem until Q2 2014). Broadcom has struggled pretty heavily, as its investment in cellular has largely destroyed the profitability of its connectivity business -- something will need to give soon. Marvell has done well in the low margin/highly competitive low end, but it seems to not be interested in the high end.

While there's the possibility that Qualcomm simply ends up eating up the lion's share of the market, Intel is investing at roughly the same level and can tolerate extreme losses in order to eventually win -- something that the smaller players can't really afford to do. Intel is buoyed (and R&D amortized) by the very profitable PC and server segments that use much of the same IP that is designed for mobile. Qualcomm has its IP licensing business to hold the line on profitability.

Foolish bottom line
The consolidation will be a long, slow, and heartbreaking process for many stockholders and employees, but we have seen this across semiconductors time and again. NVIDIA has gracefully bowed out of the "mainstream smartphone" ring, but it will continue to develop cellular modems for the other Tegra applications. These other Tegra applications likely won't require as bleeding-edge modem technology, so ultimately the investment level NVIDIA will be putting into its modems will shrink, freeing up cash for more profitable ventures.

It's fairly well known that big name industrial companies such as General Electric are embracing 3-D printing. It seems much lesser known, however, that entertainment giant Walt Disney has also been investing considerable resources into using current 3-D printing technology, as well as developing its own tech.

We'll focus on Disney's use of current 3-D printing technology here, while a second article will home in on "Papillion," which is the really cool 3-D printing technology Disney is developing that has potentially vast applications. 

Staying ahead of the technological curve -- again
Disney has been involved in 3-D printing for many years -- well before the technology became "hot" within the past couple of years. This isn't surprising, as staying ahead of the technological curve is one of the core pillars upon which Disney has build its massively successful empire, and richly rewarded shareholders along the way. Not only has Disney's stock been firing on all cylinders recently -- it returned more than 41% in the past year versus the market's nearly 23% -- it's also crushed the market's returns over the 10-year period, returning 249% to the market's 99%.

We should expect to see the world's largest media company's involvement in 3-D printing expand and deepen. Last fall, Disney Chairman Andy Bird said at a media summit: "I think every home within 10 years -- probably less than that -- will have its own 3-D printer, just as many homes now have a 2-D or laser printer." When a chair of a company believes such a thing, you can be sure that company is focusing on how it can best position itself to capitalize on such a scenario.

3-D printing as a tool to collaborate with consumers
Disney has largely been using 3-D printing in a different manner and, thus far, with a different end goal from that of most manufacturers, which makes sense given Disney occupies an entirely different business.

Manufacturers have largely been using 3-D printing in their prototyping, though an increasing number continue to expand their use to include production applications. The goals are straightforward: Decrease the new product cycle time, increase innovation (because some product designs can't be made using traditionally manufacturing techniques), and increase production efficiency.

Meanwhile, Disney -- as well as select other consumer-focused companies -- has been using 3-D printing as a tool to "involve loyalists in the production process, therefore bridging the gap between consumer and company," as well put by iMediaConnection. Essentially, the consumer becomes a participant with the company, rather than being the "target" of marketing efforts by the company. This is an important distinction, especially among the many folks who view much of what passes as "target marketing" as rather offensive. 

Here are two examples of how Disney recently used 3-D printing at its theme parks:

2012: Disney introduced its "D-Tech Me" experience

Visitors to Disney's theme parks in the summer of 2012 could have their likenesses put onto Han Solo's body in the famous carbon freezing scene from The Empire Strikes Back, the second of the Star Wars films to be released. The soon-to-be-immortalized in a famous movie scene visitor was scanned and the final product was 3-D printed and mailed to his/her home. Importantly, the process only involved about 10 minutes of the consumer's time.

2013: Disney goes for an encore -- visitors can become Stormtroopers

Source: Disney Store. If you look good in white, you might have missed your chance to be a Stormtrooper!

The process was the same here, with the visitor's mug now being put on to a 7.5-inch Stormtooper figurine. The $99.95 price tag would seem high to most of us, though I'm sure many of the Star Wars fanatics out there didn't blink an eye.

If Disney had enough takers for these offerings, I'd imagine they likely turned a profit. However, I'd guess the company would have deemed their efforts "successful" even if these offerings just broke even. That's because these "experiences" - Disney's word, not mine, and it's an important distinction from "products" -- surely generated warm and fuzzy feelings about Disney in the minds of many of the folks who now have Star Wars' characters figurines with their likenesses on them adorning their homes. Further, participating in such an "experience" certainly strengthened many of these people's positives feelings about Star Wars, likely making some of them more apt to spend money on additional Star Wars offerings in the future.

Given Disney's immense collection of well-loved characters, can you see the possibilities? People with 3-D scanners and printers in their homes will surely be able to license the rights to print such figurines in the future. The possibilities go way beyond these figurines to include toys, piggy banks, etc. based on Disney characters. (This scenario also illustrates why some companies are apprehensive about consumers having 3-D printers in their homes, as "character piracy" becomes more of a potential issue.)

Foolish final thoughts
Investors who need yet another reason to view Disney as a solid long-term investment can add its staying ahead of the curve with respect to 3-D printing technology to the list.