Best Income Stocks For 2014

Although business headlines still tout earnings numbers, many investors have moved past net earnings as a measure of a company's economic output. That's because earnings are very often less trustworthy than cash flow, since earnings are more open to manipulation based on dubious judgment calls.

Earnings' unreliability is one of the reasons Foolish investors often flip straight past the income statement to check the cash flow statement. In general, by taking a close look at the cash moving in and out of the business, you can better understand whether the last batch of earnings brought money into the company, or merely disguised a cash gusher with a pretty headline.

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 Big 5 Sporting Goods (Nasdaq: BGFV  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

Best Income Stocks For 2014: Hillenbrand Inc(HI)

Hillenbrand, Inc. designs, manufactures, distributes, and sells funeral service products to licensed funeral directors operating licensed funeral homes. The company?s products include burial caskets, cremation caskets, containers, vaults, urns, and selection room display fixturing for funeral homes, as well as other personalization and memorialization products and services, including Web-based applications, and the creation and hosting of Websites for licensed funeral homes. It markets its products under the Batesville and Options brand name through direct sales force in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The company also designs, produces, markets, sells, and services bulk solids material handling equipment and systems for various industrial markets, including plastics, food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, power generation, coal mining, pulp and paper, frac sand, industrial minerals, agribusiness, recycling, wood and forest pr oducts, and biomass energy generation. It offers feeders and pneumatic conveying equipment under the K-Tron brand name; and size reduction equipment, such as hammer mills, double-roll crushers, wood and bark hogs, chip sizers, screening equipment, pneumatic and mechanical conveying systems, storage/reclamation systems, and specialty crushers and other equipment under the Pennsylvania Crusher, Gundlach, and Jeffrey Rader brand names. In addition, the company manufactures dry material separation machines that sort dry, granular products based on the particle?s size serving various industries, including frac sand, potash, urea, phosphates, chemical, agricultural, plastics, and food processing. The company sells its material handling equipment and systems worldwide through a combination of a direct sales force, and a network of independent sales representatives and distributors. Hillenbrand, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Batesville, Indiana.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Fitz Gerald]

  Hillenbrand is the largest supplier of products to the funeral service industry. Caskets and urns are at its primary products and it sells to 16,000 of the nation's 22,000 funeral homes. This is a demographic trend that is only getting larger with an aging population. The stock yields 4% and trades for only 10 times forward earnings. I like stocks that are monopolies in their industry, pay huge dividends (which they just increased) and trade for a cheap multiple on cash flows.

Best Income Stocks For 2014: Silicon Graphics International Corp(SGI)

Silicon Graphics International Corp. provides computing and storage, and data center solutions, as well as related customer support and professional services. The company offers scale up servers; scale out servers; work group servers; data storage systems; and software products for technical computing, as well as data center infrastructure products, including ICE Cube Air, a modular data center that augments or replaces traditional brick-and-mortar data centers; and MobiRack, a line of mobile, all-in-one data center cabinets for field deployments. Its products and services are used by the scientific, technical, and business communities for solving challenging data-intensive computing, data storage, and management problems. The company also develops system applications, such as simulating global climate changes, accelerating engineering of new automotive designs, supporting homeland security initiatives, real-time fraud detection, streaming media from Internet-video to film , and gaining business intelligence through data-mining to defense and strategic systems, weather and climate, physical and life sciences, energy, aerospace and automotive, media and entertainment, semiconductor design and manufacturing, financial services, data centers, and business intelligence and data analytics markets; and enterprise class features for the Linux operating system that provide a standard Linux operating environment. Silicon Graphics International Corp. markets and sells its systems, technologies, software, and services to enterprises in approximately 25 countries through direct and indirect sales force, including distributors, original equipment manufacturers, system integrators, value added resellers, and channel partners. The company was formerly known as Rackable Systems, Inc. and changed its name to Silicon Graphics International Corp. in May 2009. Silicon Graphics International Corp. was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Fremont, Californi a.

Hot Gold Stocks For 2014: Supertex Inc.(SUPX)

Supertex, Inc., together with its subsidiary, Supertex Limited, designs, develops, manufactures, and markets high voltage analog and mixed signal integrated circuits (IC) primarily in Asia, the United States, China, and Europe. The company offers high voltage analog multiplexer switches, pulsers, high-speed MOSFET drivers, and discrete high voltage MOSFETs and arrays for the medical electronics market. It also provides LED driver products, including linear regulators and switching regulators for general lighting in automotive, industrial, and consumer applications; and for backlighting in LCD TVs, monitors, and laptop screens. In addition, the company offers electroluminescent lamps for backlighting hand-held instruments, such as cell phone keypads, watches, monochrome flat screens, and MP3 players; and driver ICs for driving non-impact printers and plotters. Further, it provides high voltage amplifier ICs to drive optical micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) for use in optical switching applications in the telecommunications market; high voltage electronic switch ICs for use in telephones; high voltage ICs for use as ring generators; and protection ICs for line cards. Additionally, the company offers ICs and DMOS devices primarily for various industrial applications. It markets and sells its products through direct sales personnel, independent sales representatives, and distributors primarily to original equipment manufacturers of electronic products. The company was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

Best Income Stocks For 2014: Brooks Automation Inc.(BRKS)

Brooks Automation, Inc. provides automation, vacuum, and instrumentation solutions for semiconductor manufacturing, life sciences, and clean energy markets worldwide. The company?s Brooks Product Solutions segment provides a range of products critical to technology equipment productivity and availability. This segment?s products include atmospheric and vacuum tool automation systems, atmospheric and vacuum robots and robotic modules, and cryogenic vacuum pumping, thermal management, and vacuum measurement solutions, which are used to create, measure, and control critical process vacuum applications. Its Brooks Life Science Systems segment offers automated sample management systems, including automated sample storage, automated blood fractionation equipment, sample preparation and handling equipment, consumables, parts, and support services to various life science customers, including pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, biobanks, national laboratories, rese arch institutes, and research universities. The company?s Brooks Global Services segment provides a range of support services, including on and off-site repair services, on and off-site diagnostic support services, and installation services to enable the customers to maximize process tool uptime and productivity. This segment also offers spare part support services to end-user customers. Brooks Automation, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.