Top 10 Services Companies To Invest In Right Now

Top 10 Services Companies To Invest In Right Now: Blucora Inc (BCOR)

Blucora, Inc., formerly InfoSpace, Inc., is a provider of online solutions for consumers and business partners. The Company owns and operates two Internet businesses. Through its InfoSpace business, the Company provides online search and monetization solutions to a network of more than 100 global partners. Through TaxACT, The Company provides online tax preparation solutions to consumers and professional preparers. The Company's search business consists primarily of a business to business offering that provides its search technology, aggregated content and services to its distribution partners. The search business also offers search services directly to consumers through its own Internet search properties. On June 22, 2011, InfoSpace sold its Mercantila e-commerce business to Zoo Stores, Inc. On January 31, 2012, InfoSpace acquired TaxACT Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiary, 2nd Story Software, Inc. In August 2013, the Company announced that it has completed the acquisition of Monoprice.

InfoSpace primarily offers search services through the Web properties of its distribution partners, which are generally private-labeled and customized to address the requirements of each distribution partner. The search business also distributes aggregated search content through its own Websites, such as Dogpile.com and WebCrawler.com. The Search segment consists of the Company's search services operations and the Tax Preparation segment is the TaxACT business. The Company's revenues are generated primarily from its Web search services. The Company's metasearch technology offers users a search experience, which combines the results of several search engine content providers, including Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, among others, and aggregates, filters, and prioritizes the results. This combination provides a more relevant search r! esults page and leverages the investments made by its Search Customers to continually improve the user experience. Par tner versions of its Web offerings are private-labeled and d! elivered with each distribution partner's requirements.

The Tax Preparation segment generates its revenue through three primary methods: the sale of state and upgraded federal income tax preparation software and online services to consumers, the sale of ancillary services to any user, paid or not, and the sale of its professional edition income tax preparation software to professional tax preparers. The ancillary services include, among other things, additional support, data archiving, a deferred payment option, and a bank card product.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Evan Niu, CFA]

  What: Shares of Blucora (NASDAQ: BCOR  ) have popped by as much as 24% today after the company announced first-quarter results.

  So what: Revenue in the first quarter totaled $165.3 million, which translated into non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.95. Investors would have been happy with just $158.8 million in sales, and Blucora's bottom-line result decimated the consensus estimate of just $0.50 per share in profit. CEO Bill Ruckelshaus said both the company's online search and tax preparation segments are off to a strong start for 2013.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  But then, H&R Block ran into trouble with its software. The IRS said that a limited number of software company products failed to provide for the correct treatment of the American Opportunity educational tax credit, forcing an estimated 660,000 taxpayers to have to wait an additional six weeks for their refunds, and H&R Block had been informing its customers about the problems. Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU  ) already has a commanding lead over H&R Block with Intuit's TurboTax software, so H&R Block's slip-up likely didn't add much to Intuit's dominance. But even Blucora's (NASDAQ: BCOR &nb! sp;) Tax! Act software might well benefit from the issue, forcing H&R Block to rely even more on its bricks-and-mortar stores in order to keep its sales up.

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-10-services-companies-to-invest-in-right-now-2.html