Update: One Year Later
Here’s a glance at how the companies featured in last year’s “Hot Stocks” article have performed.
Areva (Nasdaq: ARVCF) signed the biggest contract in the history of nuclear power—8 billion euros to build two new reactors in China. It also announced plans to build and operate a $2-billion uranium-enrichment facility in the United States and applied for approval of its European nuclear-plant design to be able to build in the States. The stock climbed by 15 percent.
AvalonBay Communities (NYSE: AVB) saw its share price decline by 32 percent, but business is booming as the collapse of home prices sends people to the apartments the company builds and rents. Occupancy remains at a high 97 percent, and the average monthly rent in the company’s 53,000 apartments in the high-cost cities of Washington, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle is $1,800.
Cogent Communications Group (Nasdaq: CCOI) expanded into the Detroit, Omaha, Des Moines, and Providence markets and internationally into Hungary, Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The telecom-company stock, which declined by 27 percent in price, is 80 percent owned by mutual funds, including Fidelity (15 percent), Morgan Stanley (14 percent), and T. Rowe Price (11 percent).
Corporate Office Properties Trust (NYSE: OFC). Tarred by the real-estate slump, this REIT that focuses on leasing specialized secure buildings to the federal government saw its shares decline by 17 percent. Still, 2007 was its tenth consecutive year of dividend increases, and the company saw a 13-percent revenue increase. It also bought 57 buildings for $378 million. Its five-year total shareholder return places it in the top five of all office REITs.
Interstate Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: IHR), alone and in partnership with other firms, acquired hotel properties and moved into hotel management in India. The strategy hasn’t helped the stock price, which is down by 30 percent since last May.
Iomai (Nasdaq: IOMI), a Gaithersburg company that made vaccine-delivery skin patches, is scheduled to be bought, pending shareholder approval, for $189 million by the Austrian company Intercell AG. That works out to $6.60 a share, up by about $4.60 from the share price a year ago.
Neuralstem (AMEX: CUR) and other biotech companies are pressing the FDA for approval of clinical trials for the first generation of stem-cell-derived drugs as the contentious debate over embryonic-stem-cell research continues. Its share price fell by 48 percent.
RCN (Nasdaq: RCNI) saw its stock lose more than half its value, falling from $26 to $12, though shareholders received a special dividend of $9.33. The Herndon telecommunications company completed the acquisition of Neon Communications for $255 million, further expanding its customer base.
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This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Washingtonian. To see more articles in this issue, click here.
