In his Mid-Cap Fundamentals model, John Ballard focuses on small and mid-sized companies with high return on capital and strong balance sheets. This week, Ballard added Dynamic Materials Corp (NASDAQ: BOOM) to his model. BOOM provides explosion-welded clad metal plates and other metal fabrications to industrial projects. BOOM’s balance sheet shows steadily increasing shareholder equity with steadily reducing liabilities. At the end of July the company announced their second quarter results which showed a small increase in sales year over year and a 26 percent increase over first quarter 2010.
We discussed Michael Arold’s Technical Swing model and his objective to use market momentum and technical indicators for his short-term moves last week. This week, Arold added Baidu Inc (NASDAQ: BIDU) to his model. BIDU is a Chinese language search engine. Recently, there has been talk of Xinhua China Ltd (OTC Bulletin Board Market: XHUA), the Chinese government’s news service, and China Mobile Ltd (NYSE: CHL), China’s mobile phone leader, teaming up to create a search engine that competes with BIDU’s model. But BIDU is the leading search provider for China and their recently released financials for quarter 2 2010 showed a 74.4 percent year over year increase in total revenues as well as a 129.8 percent year over year increase in operating profit. Their report also mentioned that they have many plans in place to help them remain, “at the center of China’s Internet ecosystem.” So while competition may offer some challenges to BIDU, their strong financials and years of industry experience may be hard to beat.
