Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ: MNST), a mid cap marketer and distributor of energy drinks and alternative beverages, has been a monster of a performer since the end of the financial crisis as the stock is up around 308% over the past five years, but could new or overlooked players like small cap beverage stocks Jones Soda Co (OTCMKTS: JSDA), Celsius Holdings, Inc (OTCMKTS: CELH) and Konared Corp (OTCBB: KRED) repeat that performance? A look strictly at the long term performance of all three small caps might have you thinking otherwise. After all, none of these small cap beverage stocks are profitable while the beverage industry can be a long hard expensive slog just to increase market share by one or two points when you are competing for shelf space with industry giants like Pepsi and Coke. But past performance is just that – the past and only part of the story as there is much more to consider about these small cap beverage stocks which could also make them potential acquisition targets by larger beverage players seeking to expand their product line up with innovative products:
Jones Soda Co. Founded in 1987 when company founder Peter van Stolk recognized the potential of emerging "alternative" products in the beverage industry, Jones Soda began as a distributor in western Canada before coming up with its own beverage flavors. In 2000, Jones Soda launched its own energy drink called WhoopAss. It should be mentioned that Jones Soda's share price peaked at around $28 a share in 2007 but has mostly traded below the $1 level since the financial crisis. However, the company has been under a new CEO since 2012 and she has been working to turn the company around. Either way, annual net losses have fallen from the $10 million level in 2009 to under $3 million in 2012. On Tuesday, Jones Soda rose 0.16% to $0.556 (JSDA has a 52 week trading range of $0.25 to $0.91 a share) for a market cap of $21.50 million plus the stock is up 104.4% over the past year and up 20.8% over the past five years.Top Bank Companies To Watch In Right Now
KonaRed Corporation's products are already sold in select Whole Foods, Albertsons, Safeway, Sprouts, Wal-mart, 7-Eleven, and many other retail outlets throughout the US and Canada.
In addition to recent a announcements about getting its products into more retail stores, Konared Corp announced earlier this month that it had entered into a purchase agreement with Lincoln Park Capital Fund, LLC, a Chicago-based institutional investor that is committed to invest up to $12 million of equity capital over the term of the Purchase Agreement; plus at the end of last month, the company also announced a $1 million private placement – meaning KRED probably has enough working capital to keep expanding and developing new products for this year. On Tuesday, Konared Corp rose 0.01% to $0.70 (KRED has a 52 week trading range of $0.59 to $1.36 a share) for a market cap of $45.05 million plus the stock is up 0.01% since last October.
The Bottom Line. Again, all of the above small cap beverage stocks are not yet profitable and have had their share of past performance hiccups, but all of them do have products with the potential to make them the next Monster Beverage Corp.
Carolina Hidalgo, Tampa Bay Times/ZUMAPRESS.com/Alamy NEW YORK -- Target's pre-Christmas security breach was significantly more extensive and affected millions more shoppers than the company reported last month. The nation's second largest discounter said Friday that hackers stole personal information -- including names, phone numbers as well as email and mailing addresses -- from as many as 70 million customers as part of a data breach it discovered in December. Target Corp. (TGT) disclosed last month that about 40 million credit and debit cards may have been affected by a data breach that happened between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 -- just as the holiday shopping season was getting into gear. According to the company's investigation, criminals also took non-credit card related data for some 70 million shoppers who could have made purchases at Target stores outside the late November to mid-December time frame. Some overlap exists between the two data sets, the company said Friday. "I know that it is frustrating for our guests to learn that this information was taken and we are truly sorry they are having to endure this," said Gregg Steinhafel, Target chairman, president and CEO, in a statement. While Target investors have been largely unmoved, the incident has shaken shoppers. The company's stock has traded at about $63 since news of the breach leaked on Dec. 18. It slipped just 67 cents, or 1 percent, to $62.67 in morning trading Friday. Target revealed Friday, however, that the breach diminished holiday sales. The company cut its forecast for fourth-quarter earnings, a key sales barometer. The theft from Target's databases is still the second largest data breach on record, rivaling an incident uncovered in 2007 that saw more than 90 million credit card accounts pilfered from TJX Cos. (TJX). Target said in December that customers' names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates, debit-card PINs and the embedded code on the magnetic strip on the back of cards had been stolen. The company has been working with the Secret Service and the Department of Justice on the investigation. Target tried to woo scared shoppers back to stores on the last weekend before Christmas with a 10 percent discount on nearly everything in its stores. But Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy, estimated that the number of transactions at Target fell 3 percent to 4 percent on the Saturday before Christmas, compared with a year ago. "You have violated that person's trust. And it's going to take time to regain that trust," said Brian Sozzi, CEO and chief equities strategist of Belus Capital Advisors. Target lowered its fourth-quarter adjusted earnings guidance to a range of $1.20 to $1.30 a share, down from $1.50 to $1.60 a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect earnings of $1.24 a share. The Minneapolis company also said that it now foresees fourth-quarter sales at stores open at least a year will be down about 2.5 percent. It previously predicted those sales would be about flat. This figure is a closely watched indicator of a retailer's health. Target cautioned that its fourth-quarter financials may include charges related to the data breach. The chain said the costs tied to the breach may have a material adverse effect on its quarterly results as well as future periods. The company has 1,921 stores, with 1,797 locations in the U.S. and 124 in Canada. 
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AP/Elise Amendola Netflix (NFLX) has been called a lot of things over the years -- some of them unkind. As the leading streaming video service -- serving up 2 billion hours of content a month -- it's going to get that. Critics call it "rerun TV" given its digital catalog that leans heavily on episodes of shows that are no longer on the air, or older seasons of current shows. Fans view it as a hub for "binge viewing" as it makes entire seasons of even new original programming available all at once, so folks can stream episode after episode. If Netflix has its way, the next name it's called may be "movie mogul." One of the more interesting tidbits from Netflix's earnings call late last month was the suggestion that it could soon start competing with the major Hollywood studios it usually partners with by producing a big-budget blockbuster. "It seems like you have bigger aspirations to do a real -- call it $100 million type -- movie," Netflix was asked. "Could you discuss why that's interesting and what that could potentially do for Netflix?" This is the kind of question that Netflix would have laughed off in the past, but Chief Content OfficerTed Sarandos didn't shoot down the chatter this time. Tinseltown Rebellion "Without confirming or denying the range or the aspiration, I would say that to the consumers the line between a movie and a TV is getting pretty blurry," Sarandos responded, going on to say that a TV show like "House of Cards" with 13 episodes is more like a 13-hour movie. A movie, then, is along the lines of a two-hour TV show. This would seem to indicate that Netflix thinks investing in an original series along the lines of "Orange is the New Black" or bankrolling that fourth season of "Arrested Development" is a better financial gamble than joining Hollywood's gamble in backing a costly film. But Sarandos didn't stop there. He went on to complain that the movie industry's system of putting out a movie in the multiplexes, and then waiting nearly a year before releasing it in other distribution outlets is a broken model. "What we like to do is look at ways -- different ways -- that we can accelerate that window," he said. "Maybe like with original programming, the most effective way to work that is to do it yourself." That makes it sound as if Netflix will be producing a major theatrical release sooner rather than later as a way to reinvent the release cycle of movies, the way its full-season-at-once system is reinventing the release cycle for new TV shows. Coming Soon to a Theater Near You Last month, Netflix received its first Oscar nomination for "The Square," a critically-acclaimed documentary that details the Egyptian revolution that began in Tahrir Square three years ago. Another Netflix-produced documentary -- "Mitt," which focuses on the failed 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney -- began streaming on the service late last month. Documentaries are safe investments for Netflix. They are far cheaper to produce than scripted films, and Netflix knows that they generate a lot of interest for a fair amount of time. Making a Hollywood-style movie will come with risks. Will it fare well at the box office? Will moviegoers stay away if they know that it's going to be streaming on Netflix sooner than most theatrical releases? These will be important questions to answer given the amount of money that Netflix may have to invest unless it teams up with other parties. However, a huge benefit for Netflix would be something that was mentioned at the beginning of this article. Netflix is streaming 2 billion hours of content a month, and it began the year with 44 million streaming customers worldwide. None of its competitors comes even close to those numbers. Netflix knows just what these 44 million people are watching -- information that will be invaluable in deciding what movies to get behind. It knows which genres, directors, writers, and actors viewers are drawn to with a precision even the most successful Hollywood studios can't match. Netflix is going to make a movie -- a big movie -- and when it does, you're probably going to want to see it.
Ron Antonelli/Bloomberg via Getty Images WASHINGTON -- U.S. manufacturing grew at a slightly slower pace in December but hiring hit a 2½-year high and the volume of new orders soared to a level last seen in early 2010. The Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity stood at 57 last month. That was in line with economist forecasts but a touch below November's 2½-year high of 57.3. Readings above 50 indicate expansion. Even so, December's result was the second highest reading this year. The goods-producing sector contracted in May but its growth accelerated over the second half of 2013. And the forward-looking new orders index, at 64.2, checked in at its highest level since April 2010, suggesting momentum in the sector could quicken in 2014. It stood at 63.6 in November. The employment index rose to 56.9, its best showing since June 2011, from 56.5 in November. A second report from the federal government showed U.S. construction spending rose to its highest level in nearly five years in November as a surge in private construction projects offset a drop in public outlays. Construction spending increased 1 percent to an annual rate of $934.4 billion, the highest level since March 2009, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the eighth straight month that construction spending increased. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a gain of 0.6 percent in November. Construction spending in October was revised to show a 0.9 percent rise instead of the previously reported 0.8 percent increase. The report added to data ranging from employment to consumer spending that have suggested resilience in the economy even as growth is expected to step down from the third-quarter's brisk 4.1 percent annual rate. Construction spending in November was lifted by a jump in private construction projects to their highest level since December 2008. Private construction spending rose 2.2 percent after being flat in October. The increase reflected strong gains in spending on both residential and nonresidential projects. Private residential spending hit its highest level since June 2008 and outlays on nonresidential structures, which include factories and gas pipelines, touched an 11-month high. Public construction spending fell 1.8 percent as both outlays on federal and state and local government projects declined.
Here's the Problem One reason why Russ' target fund has disappointed this year is because these funds follow an easy-to-understand formula called the "rule of 100." 
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