Top 5 Paper Stocks To Invest In 2015

Every so often I'll read a story in the local paper that makes me chuckle, involving an honest mistake that, when compounded over the years, can turn into one costly little blunder. In this case, the mistake was compounded by a series of mergers, and $4.3 million later, a natural gas giant is still waiting to be paid for its missing gas.

It all started back in 2008, which was a trying time for us all. At that time, LINN Energy (NASDAQ: LINE  ) and the rest of its exploration and production peers were trying to figure out what to do as the economy hit the skids. In an effort to shore up its own balance sheet, the company sold its operations in the Appalachian Basin for $600 million to XTO Energy.

Unfortunately for XTO Energy, there was one small and, unbeknownst to anyone, unresolved matter. You see, LINN had a contract to sell its gas through a unit of Dominion Resources (NYSE: D  ) , which was gathering the gas in its system. However, LINN's gas wasn't up to the system's standards, so it began to look for another gatherer and it approached Equitrans, which is now part of EQT Midstream Partners (NYSE: EQM  ) but formerly was a unit of EQT Corp. (NYSE: EQT  ) -- they talked, but nothing was signed. However, an EQT employee later that year thought that it had and began crediting gas to the wrong company.

Top 5 Paper Stocks To Invest In 2015: CenturyLink Inc.(CTL)

CenturyLink, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as an integrated communications company. The company provides a range of communications services, including voice, Internet, data, and video services in the continental United States. Its services include local exchange and long distance voice telephone services, as well as enhanced voice services, such as call forwarding, caller identification, conference calling, voicemail, selective call ringing, and call waiting; wholesale local network access services; and data services, including high-speed Internet access services, data transmission services over special circuits and private lines, and switched digital television services, as well as special access and private line services. The company also offers fiber transport, competitive local exchange carrier, security monitoring, and other communications, as well as professional and business information services. In addition, it provides other related services, such as leasing, selling, installing, and maintaining customer premise telecommunications equipment and wiring; payphone services; and network database services, as well as participates in the publication of local telephone directories. Further, the company offers printing, direct mail services, and cable television services; and wireless broadband Internet access services and satellite television services. As of December 31, 2010, it operated approximately 6.5 million telephone access lines. CenturyLink, Inc was founded in 1968 and is based in Monroe, Louisiana.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Selena Maranjian]

  Finally, Citadel's biggest closed positions included NetApp�and Newell Rubbermaid. Other closed positions of interest include CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL  ) and Corning (NYSE: GLW  ) . Telecom company CenturyLink has recently been yielding 6.1%, but that reflects a recent dividend cut of about 25% as the company focuses more on share buybacks. It landed a hefty Pentagon contract in April, with a possible 10-year value of $750 million, and has been moving into promising arenas such as cloud computing. The company has substantial debt, topping $19 billion, but also significant free cash flow, near $3 billion annually. Its debt load is lower than some peers, too.

• [By Sue Chang and Polya Lesova]

  CenturyLink Inc. (CTL) �shares rose 3%. The stock is one of the top net payout yield stocks so far in October, according to Seeking Alpha.

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) is losing one less adversarial call in a controversial stock. Nomura has raised its rating up to Neutral from Reduce now that shares have come down to within about 1.5% of a 52-week low.

• [By Rick Munarriz]

  Finally, we have CenturyLink� (NYSE: CTL  ) coming through with encouraging bottom-line results. Its adjusted profit of $0.76 a share was ahead of the $0.68 a share it posted a year earlier. The pros were targeting flat earnings growth.

Top 5 Paper Stocks To Invest In 2015: Meadwestvaco Corporation (MWV)

MeadWestvaco Corporation (MWV) provides packaging solutions to the healthcare, personal care and beauty, food, beverage, home and garden, tobacco, and commercial print industries worldwide. The company?s Packaging Resources segment produces bleached paperboard, Coated Natural Kraft paperboard, and linerboard. Its Consumer Solutions segment designs and produces multi-pack cartons and packaging systems primarily for the beverage take-home and tobacco market. In addition, it offers a range of converting and consumer packaging solutions, including printed plastic packaging and injection-molded products used for personal care, beauty, and pharmaceutical products; and dispensing and sprayer systems for personal care, beauty, healthcare, fragrance, and home and garden markets. In addition, this segment has a pharmaceutical packaging contract with a mass-merchant, and manufactures equipment that is leased or sold to its beverage and dairy customers to package their products. The c ompany?s Consumer & Office Products segment manufactures, sources, markets, and distributes school and office products, time-management products, and envelopes in North America and Brazil through both retail and commercial channels. Its Specialty Chemicals segment manufactures, markets, and distributes specialty chemicals derived from sawdust and other byproducts of the papermaking process in North America, South America, and Asia. Its products include activated carbon used in emission control systems for automobiles and trucks, as well as for water and food purification applications, and performance chemicals used in printing inks, asphalt paving, adhesives, and lubricants for the agricultural, paper, and petroleum industries. MWV?s Community Development and Land Management segment involves in real estate development, forestry operations, and leasing activities. MeadWestvaco Corporation was founded in 1888 and is based in Glen Allen, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Will Ashworth]

  I don�� know about you but I definitely use several of its products on a regular basis. In fact, right here on my desk beside my computer is a small, Five Star notebook for jotting down ideas. I grew up on Hilroy notebooks, a brand brought to the table in its 2012 merger with MeadWestvaco�� (MWV) Consumer and Office Products division. MWV shareholders received one-third of an ACCO share for every MWV share. Since the deal was completed, ACCO stock has lost 42% of its value.

• [By Eric Volkman]

  MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV  ) is continuing to deliver payouts for its shareholders. The company has declared a fresh quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, to be handed out on September 3 to shareholders of record as of August 31.�That amount matches each of the company's regular quarterly payouts stretching back to late 2010. Prior to that, it paid $0.23 per share.

• [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 MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

Best Canadian Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Rock-Tenn Co (RKT)

Rock-Tenn Company (RockTenn), incorporated on September 20, 1985, is a North America's integrated manufacturer of corrugated and consumer packaging. The Company operates locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Puerto Rico and China. The Company operates in three segments: Corrugated Packaging, consisting of its containerboard mills and its corrugated converting operations; Consumer Packaging, consisting of its coated and uncoated paperboard mills, consumer packaging converting operations and merchandising display facilities, and Recycling, which consists of its recycled fiber brokerage and collection operations. On June 22, 2012, the Company acquired Mid South Packaging LLC. On October 28, 2011, the Company acquired four entities doing business as GMI Group.

Corrugated Packaging Segment

The Company is a producer of linerboard and corrugated medium (containerboard) measured by tons produced and a producer of graphics pre-printed linerboard in North America. It operates an integrated system, which manufactures containerboard, corrugated sheets, corrugated packaging and preprinted linerboard for sale to industrial and consumer products manufacturers and corrugated box manufacturers. It produces a range of corrugated containers designed to protect, ship, store and display products made to its customers' merchandising and distribution specifications. It also converts corrugated sheets into corrugated products ranging from one-color protective cartons to point-of-purchase packaging. Corrugated packaging is used to provide protective packaging for shipment and distribution of food, paper, health and beauty and other household, consumer, commercial and industrial products and in the case of graphically enhanced corrugated packaging for retail sale, particularly in club store locations and retail sale. It also provides structural and graphic design, engineering services, and custom and standard automated packaging machines, offering customers turn-key instal! lation, automation, line integration and packaging solutions. It feeds linerboard and corrugated medium into corrugators, which flutes the medium to specified sizes, glues the linerboard and fluted medium together and slits and cuts the resulting corrugated paperboard into sheets to customer specifications. Its container board mills and corrugated container operations are integrated with its containerboard production used internally by its corrugated container operations. During the fiscal year ended September 30, 2012 (fiscal 2012), sales of corrugated packaging products to external customers accounted for 65.7% of its net sales.

Consumer Packaging Segment

The Company operates an integrated system of coated recycled mills and a bleached paperboard mill, which produces paperboard for its folding carton operations and third parties. The Company is a manufacturer of folding cartons in North America measured by net sales. Its folding cartons are used to package food, paper, health and beauty and other household consumer, commercial and industrial products for retail sale. It also manufactures express mail envelopes for the overnight courier industry. Folding cartons protect customers��products during shipment and distribution and employ graphics to promote them at retail. It manufactures folding cartons from recycled and virgin paperboard, laminated paperboard and substrates with specialty characteristics, such as grease masking and microwaveability. It prints, coats, die-cuts and glues the cartons to customer specifications. It ships finished cartons to customers for assembling, filling and sealing. It employs a range of offset, flexographic, gravure, backside printing, and coating and finishing technologies. It supports its customers with package development, innovation and design services and package testing services.

The Company manufactures temporary and permanent point-of-purchase displays. The Company designs, manufactures and packs temporary displays for sal! e to cons! umer products companies. These displays are used as marketing tools to support new product introductions and specific product promotions in mass merchandising stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, home improvement stores and other retail locations. It also designs, manufactures and pre-assemble permanent displays for the same categories of customers. It makes temporary displays from corrugated paperboard. It provides contract packing services, such as multi-product promotional packing and product manipulation, such as multipacks and onpacks. The Company manufactures lithographic laminated packaging for sale to its customers, which require packaging with graphics and strength characteristics.

The Company operates an integrated system of specialty recycled paperboard mills, which includes its Seven Hills Paperboard LLC (Seven Hills) joint venture. Its specialty recycled paperboard mills, excluding Seven Hills, produce paperboard for its solid fiber interior packaging converting operations and third parties, and its Seven Hills joint venture manufactures gypsum paperboard liner for sale to its joint venture partner. It sells its specialty recycled paperboard to manufacturers of solid fiber interior packaging, tubes and cores, and other paperboard products. It also converts specialty paperboard into book covers and other products. Its 65% owned subsidiary, RTS, designs and manufactures solid fiber and corrugated partitions and die-cut paperboard components. It manufactures and sells its solid fiber and corrugated partitions principally to glass container manufacturers and producers of beer, food, wine, spirits, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals and to the automotive industry. During fiscal 2012, sales of consumer packaging products to external customers accounted for 27.5% of its net sales.

Recycling Segment

The Company�� recycled fiber brokerage and collection operations provide a strategic advantage to its mills. Its recycling operations procure recovered paper (or! recycled! fiber) for its paper mills, as well as for third parties from factories, warehouses, commercial printers, office complexes, grocery and retail stores, document storage facilities, paper converters and other wastepaper collectors. It handles a range of grades of recovered paper, including old corrugated containers, office paper, box clippings, newspaper and print shop scraps. It operates recycling facilities, which collects, sorts, grades and bales recovered paper and after sorting and baling, it transfer recovered paper to its paperboard mills for processing, or sell it to the United States manufacturers of paperboard, as well as manufacturers of tissue, newsprint, roofing products and insulation and to export markets. It also collects aluminum and plastics for resale to manufacturers of these products. Its waste reduction services extract additional recyclables from the waste stream by working with customers. In addition, it operates a nationwide fiber marketing and brokerage system, which serves regional and national accounts, as well as its recycled paperboard and containerboard mills and sells scrap materials from its converting businesses and mills. Brokerage contracts provide bulk purchasing. Its recycling facilities are located close to its recycled paperboard and containerboard mills, ensuring availability of supply with reduced shipping costs. During fiscal 2012, sales to external customers accounted for 6.8% of its net sales.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Shares of MeadWestvaco have jumped 4.6% to $37.29 today at 3:36 p.m. Other paper packaging companies, however, aren’t getting a boost from the news or from Merrill’s upgrade. Shares of Rock-Tenn (RKT) have dipped 0.1% to $100.34, International Paper (IP) has ticked up 0.1% to $48.74and Packaging Corp. of America (PKG) is little changed at $65.40.

• [By Dr. Melvin Pasternak]

  Although I still remain cautious because of fears of tapering by the Federal Reserve, I am again trading from the long side. One stock I am currently attracted to is Rock-Tenn (NYSE: RKT), an international paper and packaging company, which according to Bloomberg, sports the highest earnings per share (EPS) in its industry.

Top 5 Paper Stocks To Invest In 2015: Boise Inc (BZ)

Boise Inc., incorporated on February 1, 2007, is a manufacturer of packaging and paper products, including corrugated containers and sheets, containerboard, protective packaging products, imaging papers for the office and home, printing and converting papers, label and release papers, newsprint and market pulp. The Company operates in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Canada. The Company operates in three segments: Packaging, Paper, and Corporate and Other. The Company�� newsprint is sold primarily to newspaper publishers in the southern and southwestern the United States. During the year ended December 31, 2012, approximately 38% of the Company�� uncoated freesheet paper was sold to OfficeMax Incorporated, its customer.

Packaging

In the Packaging segment, the Company manufactures and sells linerboard, containerboard, corrugated containers and sheets, protective packaging products, and newsprint. Linerboard is a paperboard, which when combined with corrugating medium is used in the manufacture of corrugated sheets and containers. Corrugated sheets are containerboard sheets that are sold primarily to converters that produce a variety of corrugated products. Corrugated containers are corrugated sheets that have been fed through converting machines to create containers, which are used in the packaging of fresh fruit and vegetables, processed food, beverages, and other industrial and consumer products. Stock boxes are corrugated containers manufactured to pre-set dimensions.

Protective packaging products include multi-material customized packaging solutions, which may utilize kraft paper-based honeycomb corrugated packaging, foamed plastics, and air pocket packing materials Newsprint is a paper commonly used for printing newspapers, other publications, and advertising material. During the year ended December 31, 2012, its Packaging segment produced approximately 613,000 short tons of linerboard, and its Paper segment produced approximately 135,000 short tons! of corrugating medium. It manufactures linerboard and newsprint on two machines at its mill in DeRidder, Louisiana. It also manufactures corrugated containers and sheets and protective packaging products at 26 plants located in North America and Europe.

Paper

In its Paper segment, the Company manufactures and sells three general categories of products: communication-based papers; packaging-based papers, and market pulp. Its communication-based papers include cut-size office papers, and printing and converting papers. Its Packaging-Demand-Driven Papers include Label and release papers, Flexible packaging papers, and Corrugating medium. Printing and converting papers are used by commercial printers or converters to manufacture envelopes, forms, and other commercial paper products.

Its packaging-based papers include label and release papers and corrugating medium. The Label and release papers include label facestocks, as well as release liners. The coated and uncoated papers sold to customers create packaging products for food and nonfood applications. Market pulp is sold to customers in the open market for use in the manufacture of paper products. The Company manufactures its Paper segment products at three mills, all located in the United States.

Corporate and Other

The Company�� Corporate and Other segment includes transportation assets, such as rail cars and trucks, which it uses to transport its products from its manufacturing sites. The Company provides transportation services not only to its own facilities but also, on a limited basis, to third parties. Rail cars and trucks are typically leased.

The Company competes with International Paper Company, Rock-Tenn Company, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Packaging Corporation of America, Longview Fibre Paper, Packaging, Inc, Green Bay Packaging Inc., KapStone Paper, TexCorr, L.P., Resolute Forest Product, SP Newsprint Co. and Domtar Corporation.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Christopher Freeburn]

  Under the deal, which is expected to close during the fourth quarter, Packaging Corp. will pay $12.55 a share, or $1.27 billion, for Boise (BZ). That represents a 26% premium over the target’s last closing price, the Associated Press noted.

• [By David Sterman]

  That was precisely the rationale behind Packaging Corp. of America's (NYSE: PKG) just-announced $2 billion (in cash and assumed debt) acquisition of rival Boise (NYSE: BZ). The deal will create a $6 billion (in sales) behemoth in the cardboard box industry.

Top 5 Paper Stocks To Invest In 2015: Crown Holdings Inc (CCK)

Crown Holdings, Inc., incorporated on February 7, 2003, is engaged in designing, manufacturing and sale of packaging products for consumer goods. Its business is organized within three divisions: Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Its segments within the Americas Division are Americas Beverage and North America Food. Its segments within the European Division are European Beverage and European Food. Americas Beverage includes beverage can operations in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia and Mexico. North America Food includes food can and metal vacuum closure operations in the United States and Canada. European Beverage includes beverage can operations in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. European Food includes food can and metal vacuum closure operations in Europe and Africa. Its Asia Pacific Division consists of beverage and non-beverage can operations, primarily food cans and specialty packaging. As of December 31, 2012, it acquired Superior Multi-Packaging Ltd.

The Company supplies beverage cans and ends and other packaging products to a range of beverage and beer companies, including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Cott Beverages, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Heineken, National Beverage and Pepsi-Cola, among others. The Company manufactures a range of food cans and ends, including two-and three-piece cans in numerous shapes and sizes, and sells food cans to food marketers, such as Bonduelle, Cecab, ConAgra, Continentale, Mars, Simmons Foods, Nestle, Princes Group and Stockmeyer, among others.

The Company offers a range of metal vacuum closures and sealing equipment. The Company�� customers for aerosol cans and ends include manufacturers of personal care, food, household and industrial products, including Colgate Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson and Unilever, among others. The Company�� customers for aerosol cans and ends include manufacturers of personal care, food, household and industrial products, including Colgate Palmolive, Procte! r & Gamble, SC Johnson and Unilever, among others.

Americas Division

The Americas Division includes operations in the United States, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, Colombia and Mexico. These operations manufacture beverage, food and aerosol cans and ends, specialty packaging and metal vacuum closures and caps. The Americas Beverage segment manufactures aluminum beverage cans and ends and steel crowns, referred to as bottle caps. The North America Food segment manufactures steel and aluminum food cans and ends and metal vacuum closures.

European Division

The European Division includes operations in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. These operations manufacture beverage, food and aerosol cans and ends, specialty packaging and metal vacuum closures and caps. The European Beverage segment manufactures steel and aluminum beverage cans and ends. The European Food segment manufactures steel and aluminum food cans and ends, and metal vacuum closures.

Asia Pacific division

The Company's Asia Pacific Division consists of beverage can operations in Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and non-beverage can operations, primarily including food cans and specialty packaging in China, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. As of December 31, 2012, the division operated 32 plants in six countries.

The Company competes with Ardagh Group, Ball Corporation, BWAY Corporation, Can-Pack S.A., Metal Container Corporation, Mivisa Envases S.A.U., Rexam PLC and Silgan Holdings Inc.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Lauren Pollock]

  Crown Holdings Inc.(CCK) cut its third-quarter earnings guidance on lower end-user demand in some of the food-and-beverage packaging company’s markets, including European food cans and North American beverage cans.