AMERICAN WOODMARK $23.22 (Nasdaq symbol AMWD; SI Rating: Speculative) (540-665-9100;www.americanwoodmark.com; Shares outstanding: 14.1 million; Market cap: $327.7 million) is a U.S.-based maker of cabinets for kitchens and bathrooms. It offers more than 380 cabinet lines in a variety of designs, materials and finishes. The company sells these through a network of dealers and distributors, as well as directly to home centres such as Home Depot and major homebuilders. American Woodmark operates 14 plants and various service centres across the U.S. In the three months ended April 30, 2009, American Woodmark lost $2.9 million, or $0.21 a share. A year earlier, it earned $36,000, or nil per share. But if you exclude one-time restructuring charges, the company would have earned $0.22 a share in the latest quarter. That’s much higher than the loss of $0.06 a share that analysts were expecting. Sales fell 1.8%, to $140.7 million from $143.3 million. Lower fuel and labour costs were the main reason for the higher profits. New construction sales remained weak, but remodelling sales rose. As well, American Woodmark closed two less-efficient plants earlier this year. It also suspended production at a third and laid off a number of salaried employees....

ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD, $16.50, symbol ATD.B on Toronto, rose over 20% this week after it reported sharply higher earnings in the latest quarter. In the three months ended April 26, 2009, Couche-Tard’s earnings rose 145.2%, to $38 million, or $0.20 a share, from $15.5 million, or $0.08 a share, a year earlier. (All figures except share price in U.S. dollars.) The higher earnings were mainly the result of acquisitions, higher profit margins on gasoline, a rise in same-store merchandise revenue, lower operating expenses and growing same-store gasoline volume in Canada....

INTEL CORP., $18.79, Nasdaq symbol INTC, jumped over 15% after it reported better-than-expected earnings. The chipmaker earned $1 billion, or $0.18 a share, in the three months ended June 27, 2009. That’s down 34.5% from $1.6 billion, or $0.28 a share, a year earlier. Still, it was far ahead of the $0.08 a share that analysts were expecting. The latest earnings exclude a $1.4-billion fine imposed by European competition regulators, which ruled in May that Intel illegally offered rebates to computer makers. In exchange for the rebates, these manufacturers would agree to buy most of their chips from Intel. The company plans to appeal the ruling....

AMAZON.COM INC., $77.63, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, has cut the price of its Kindle 2 e-book reader by $60 U.S. The unit now sells for $299 U.S. (The Kindle is only available in the United States.) The company’s larger Kindle DX, which it plans to start shipping later this summer, is still $489 U.S. Kindle users can download files from Amazon’s Kindle store, which contains over 300,000 books. Most bestsellers and new releases are just $9.99 U.S. each. Users can also download leading U.S. and international magazines and newspapers, as well as over 1,200 blogs. Because of strong demand for the Kindle, Amazon has been able to negotiate better prices from manufacturers. The price cut should spur more sales and downloads....

ALCOA INC., $9.34, New York symbol AA, lost $256 million, or $0.26 a share, in the second quarter of 2009. However, that was better than the $0.38-a-share loss that analysts were expecting. In the year-earlier quarter, the company earned $553 million, or $0.67 a share. The latest figures exclude costs related to Alcoa’s restructuring, which includes consolidating plants and laying off workers. The cutbacks saved the company around $1.3 billion in the first half of this year. By 2010, Alcoa aims to lower its costs by a total of $2.4 billion a year. Alcoa’s revenue fell 41.4%, to $4.2 billion from $7.2 billion. The company mainly sells its aluminum to customers in the aerospace, automotive and construction industries, which have struggled lately. Aluminum prices are down 49% from a year earlier, but are 9% better than they were in the first quarter of 2009....

DOREL INDUSTRIES, $26.79, symbol DII.B on Toronto, has introduced its patented Air Protect system to protect children in car seats during side-impact collisions. The system works by putting a layer of air protection around the child’s head. Air Protect inflates a cushion which then slowly loses air to absorb the energy that can cause head trauma. It will be launched as part of the company’s new Safety 1st Complete Air Car Seat. Head trauma causes the vast majority of fatalities in side-impact crashes, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Dorel believes that it will sell hundreds of thousands of the Air Protect car seats, whose technology will eventually be added to other seat designs, including lower-cost options. As well, the U.S. government is looking at requiring safer car seats in order to protect infants from side-impact crashes....

H&R BLOCK INC., $16.89, New York symbol HRB, earned $513.1 million in its latest fiscal year, which ended April 30, 2009. That’s up 15.0% from $445.9 million in the prior year. Earnings per share rose 12.5%, to $1.53 from $1.36, on more outstanding shares. Revenue fell 0.1%, to $4.08 billion from $4.09 billion. Revenue from the company’s main income-tax preparation division (which accounts for 74% of its revenue) rose 1.5%. H&R Block’s U.S. offices processed 5.8% fewer personal income-tax returns this year, but the average fee per return rose 7.2%. The number of U.S. tax returns processed online, including those done through H&R Block’s TaxCut software, jumped 21.1%. However, a 4.7% revenue drop at the company’s business-services division, which sells tax, accounting and consulting services, offset these gains. As well, revenue at the consumer-finance division, which sells loans and credit cards to H&R Block’s tax-preparation clients, fell 0.6%....

THE BOEING CO., $41.88, New York symbol BA, fell 13% this week after it delayed the initial test flight of its new 787 Dreamliner plane for a fifth time. The company had hoped to perform the flight by the end of June. The delay was caused by the discovery of weakness where the wings connect to the plane’s body. Boeing’s management feels that the problem is small, but it has postponed test flights for now. This, in turn, will delay deliveries to customers; Boeing had planned to start delivering 787s in the first quarter of 2010. The recession has hurt global travel volumes, so many airlines would probably prefer to postpone buying new 787s anyway. But some will probably still demand millions of dollars in compensation....

INTERNATIONAL ROAD DYNAMICS, $0.80, symbol IRD on Toronto, continues to sign new contracts. This week, the company announced that it has signed two new deals involving weigh-station systems for trucks: One is with the state of Wisconsin, and the other is with Georgia. Taken together, these new contracts are worth roughly $2.7 million. Both states have been International Road customers for a long time. The company’s weigh-in-motion system weighs trucks while they’re moving, rather than at less-efficient roadside weigh stations. Aside from these, International Road makes products and systems that manage highway traffic, such as automated toll-road technology, as well as advanced traffic-control, driver-management and data-collection systems. Saskatoon-based International Road has customers all over the world....

United Technologies serves the aerospace and construction industries. These are highly cyclical businesses, and fears of a long recession caused the stock to fall 54.7%, from $82.50 in 2007 to $37.40 in March 2009. Since then, the stock has regained a third of this drop. We feel United Technologies has more gains ahead. That’s largely because all of its companies are market leaders with strong brands and loyal customers. As well, a new restructuring plan puts the company in a good position to rapidly increase its earnings when the economy begins to recover. UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORP. $51 (New York symbol UTX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 942 million; Market cap: $48 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; WSSF Rating: Above Average) has six main businesses: Carrier makes heating and air-conditioning equipment (25% of 2008 revenue, 17% of profit); Otis makes and services elevators (22%, 32%); Pratt & Whitney makes aircraft engines (22%, 27%); Hamilton Sundstrand makes electronic controls for aircraft (11%, 13%); UTC Fire & Security sells burglar alarms and fire-protection services (11%, 6%); and Sikorsky makes helicopters (9%, 5%). The U.S. government is United Technologies’ biggest customer, and accounts for about 13% of its yearly revenue....