This small-capital member of the Healthcare Facilities industry from Louisville, KY has got its business model just right. Profits during the Most Recent Quarter, one of the most difficult periods in recent times for most stocks, have grown by 47%. Interestingly, gross revenues have grown by just about 20% during this period. The implied Gross Margin improvement can only be because patients and their families value the home-nursing and assisted living services very highly.

The company serves Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and Illinois, apart from Kentucky. It is also present in Alabama and Missouri. Visiting nurse facilities are recognized by Medicare. Trained care-givers are available on hourly bases or as live-in professionals. The corporation operates through subsidiaries, and has judiciously used inorganic growth options to extend its operations. It manages more than 30 certified agencies. It has established an enviable reputation for quality recuperative services. The competition in this industry is

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Cbeyond Inc. (Nasdaq: CBEY) provides IP-based managed services through integrated packages of communications and IT services. The company’s customer base includes more than 36,000 small businesses throughout the United States. Cbeyond today announced it was ranked seventh on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s list of top 100 public companies in Georgia. The company jumped nine spots from its 16th-place ranking in 2007.

The ranking, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, was based on five components: annual revenue, year-over-year revenue change, a change in profit margin in fiscal 2007, return on equity and total return on investment for calendar 2007.

“Cbeyond experienced great success in 2007 due to our consistent, predictable business model,” Jim Geiger, chairman and CEO of Cbeyond stated in the press release. “The continued growth and profitability of the company highlights the need small businesses have for big business communication tools that are affordable, reliable, and easy-to-use.”

The company’s growth strategy revolves around

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This market is not producing stocks with astronomical returns like we saw in 1999, 2003, and even 2004. Gains now seem to get cut off anywhere between 50-100% unless you are PDO and MXC. Although its been difficult I still manage to find excellent stocks although the market is bad. I want to see stocks with tremendous growth in sales and earnings, not 15% growth but 100% or more. This gives me laser focus on the top growth stocks in the market. With this focus on growth I’ve come across AMPH - American Physicians Svc. Lets get to the numbers: Sales % growth YoY: 120.92% 3 yr Sales growth: 43% EPS % growth YoY: 1,476.11% 3 yr EPS growth: 45% These are certainly the type of growth numbers I want to see, very high and even its 3 year growth is impressive. Moving onto ...

My latest column is up at RealMoney. It marks the last of a several part “wallflower” series on stocks with limited analyst coverage on Wall Street.

Standard Parking (STAN) is a leading national provider of parking facility management services. It provides on-site management services at multilevel and surface parking facilities for all major markets of the parking industry. Its properties span 2,100 locations, containing over one million parking spaces, in over 330 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The company grows both by acquisitions and by winning new contracts. In the first quarter, Standard Parking completed the acquisition of Chicago’s GO Parking. Recent business wins include valet and self-parking services at the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Chicago and the parking operations at five facilities in Queens, New York, by the Greater Jamaica Development Corp.

Furthermore, because the company offers a wide range of services, it can often expand the business

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Gene Marcial, Business Week’s stock-picking guru, recommended Exxon Mobil (XOM) on 6/3/08:

a. It has been piling up billions upon billions of dollars each year in eye-popping profits.

b.The real story here is why Exxon Mobil is a must-own for long-term investors.

c. You can’t expect spectacular returns going forward, but predictable profitability is attractive in a volatile market.

d. According to Marcial, the company is still very much undervalued.

e. The stock now trades at just 10 times 2008 estimated earnings of $9 a share. That is about in line with, or less than, its smaller peers.

f. The company’s return on equity went to 34.5% last year from 26% in 2006. And dividend growth is at a yearly clip of 9.1%, with the shares yielding 1.7%. Exxon Mobil bought back about $8 billion of its stock in the first quarter of 2008.

g. oil and gas production accounted for only 7.3% of revenues

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