Hot Electric Utility Stocks To Watch Right Now

Hot Electric Utility Stocks To Watch Right Now: Alere Inc (ALR)

Alere Inc., incorporated on May 11, 2001, is a provider of point-of-care diagnostics and services. The Company's products and services help healthcare practitioners make treatment decisions and improve outcomes for individuals living with chronic disease. The Company's portfolio also includes a range of health information solutions that access to critical health data, provide clinical decision support, and facilitate performance reporting and analysis. The Company's segment includes professional diagnostics, health information solutions and consumer diagnostics. The Company distributes its professional diagnostic products to hospitals, reference laboratories, physician offices and other point-of-care settings through an worldwide distribution networks. In February 2013, the Company acquired Epocal, Inc.

Professional Diagnostics

Professional diagnostics are generally designed to assist medical professionals in both preventative and interventiona l medicine, and include testing and monitoring performed in hospitals, laboratories and doctors' offices and, increasingly, patient self-testing, which the Company defines as testing or monitoring performed at home under the supervision of a medical professional. Professional diagnostic products provide for qualitative or quantitative analysis of patient samples for evidence of a specific medical condition, disease state or toxicological state or to measure response to therapy. The point-of-care market for rapid diagnostic products includes all areas where a patient is assessed or diagnosed, including hospitals, laboratories, physician offices, specialized mobile clinics, emergency rooms, rapid-response laboratories and patient health screening locations.

The Company's Alere Cholestech LDX System is a point-of-care monitor of blood cholesterol and relat! ed lipids which is used to test patients at risk of, or suffering from, heart disease and related conditions. T he Alere Cholestech LDX System makes it possible to provide ! a complete lipid profile with tests for total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), triglycerides, and glucose. The Company's Alere INRatio System is an easy-to-use, hand-held blood coagulation monitoring system for use by patients and healthcare professionals in the management of warfarin, a commonly prescribed medication used to prevent blood clots. The Company also offers the epoc Blood Analysis System for bloods gas, electrolyte and metabolite testing, which is manufactured by its recently acquired Epocal division. The epoc (enterprise point-of-care) platform is a point-of-care analysis system which provides Wireless bedside blood gas, electrolyte and metabolite measurement testing solutions and complements the Company's Alere Triage products in cardiology and emergency room settings.

The Company develops and markets a range of point-of-care tests for influenza A/B, RSV, strep throat, pneumonia , C. difficile, infectious mononucleosis, HIV, herpes simplex virus (HSV-2), hepatitis C (HCV), hepatitis B (HBV), malaria, lyme disease, Chlamydia, H. pylori, rubella and other infectious diseases. The Company's tests for infectious disease are sold under brand names that include Alere, Alere Determine, Acceava, BinaxNOW, Clearview, DoubleCheckGold, Panbio, SD, TECHLAB and Alere TestPack. In addition to point-of-care products, the Company also offers a line of indirect fluorescent antibody, or IFA, assays for over 20 viral, bacterial and autoimmune diseases, a full line of serology diagnostic products covering a range of disease categories and over 50 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), tests for a range of infectious and autoimmune diseases, as well as a full line of automated instrumentation for processing ELISA tests.

The Company offe! rs labora! tory-based testing services throughout Europe under the name Alere Toxicology, formerly Concateno, and in the United States under the names Alere Toxicology Services, or! Alere To! xicology, and Redwood Toxicology Laboratory, or Redwood. The Company offers point-of-care diabetes products, including its Afinion Analyzer System and its NycoCard System. The Company's Alere Connect products include HealthPAL and HealthCOM.

Health Information Solutions

The Company's health information solutions are designed to provide physicians with actionable data that allows them to make more decisions in real time, deliver quality care, and put the individuals they treat on a pathway to better health. The Company offers a range of software-based analytics, clinical decision support tools, and accountable cares programs that enable healthcare providers to initiate earlier interventions, personalize treatment plans, lower costs by reducing hospital readmissions, and measure improvements in outcomes at both a patient and population level. With this range of scalable solutions, the Company is able to support healthcare practitioners in the transit ion to accountable care, as well as in meeting the new pay-for-performance guidelines set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The Company's Women's and Children's Health division delivers a range of obstetrical care services that range from risk assessments focused on identifying women who may experience pregnancy complications to a neonatal program that supports early infant care management. The Company offers home-based obstetrical monitoring for pregnant women with medical or pregnancy-related problems that could puts their health or the health of their babies at risk. The Company also delivers telephonic and home-based nursing services that support improved clinical outcomes. The Company offers a suite of integrated wellness programs and resources that is designed to reduce participant health risks and healthcare! -related ! costs. The Company's wellness programs include screening for risk factors associated with chronic disease, particularly tobacco use, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and chron! ic stress! .

The Company offers services designed to support anticoagulation management for patients who takes warfarin to control their risk for stroke and clotting disorders. Alere Home Monitoring, the Company's patient self-testing business, assists patients in acquiring home INR monitors and with insurance coverage determinations and provides physicians with a comprehensive model that allows them to incorporate patient self-testing into their practices.

Consumer Diagnostics

The Company's consumer diagnostic products consist of the Company's First Check brand of over-the-counter drug tests for at-home testing for up to seven illicit drugs and five prescription drugs, as well as First Check brand over-the-counter tests for cholesterol monitoring. The Company also sells Balance Activ Vaginal Gel directly to consumers and healthcare professionals for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis without antibiotics.

The Company competes with Abbott, Siemens, Beckman Coulter, Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Abaxis Medical Diagnostics, International Technidyne Corporation, INOVA Diagnostics, DiaSorin, Diamedx and Qiagen.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Alere (NYSE: ALR  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/hot-electric-utility-stocks-to-watch-right-now.html