It's International Women's Day. My avatar and birthday-sharer Aung San Suu Kyi has disgraced her sex by backing her fellow Burmese in their genocidal attacks on members of the Rohingya Muslim minority. She has just been stripped of her US Holocaust Museum human rights award, named after Eli Wiesel, for her recent support of a pogrom. However, she gets to keep the Nobel Peace Prise whe won in 1991 which she spent on a health and education trust for Burmese.

Unworthy female Nobelists include Pearl Buck, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. In my view, her 1945 book, Peony, about the Kaifeng Jewish community in China, was blatantly anti-Semitic although it was published after the horrors of the Holaucast were known. Later she opposed trying Eichmann in Israel.

Contarary to fears, the Bank of Canada, its CB, did not hike interest rates today.

Except for the weather, it is not a terrible Thursday. We have news from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Britain, Thailand, Japan, Chile, and Egypt.

Industrials

*Crédit Suisse this morning from London upgraded Israeli Tower Semiconductor (TSIM) to outperform with a target price of $38.50. It is now about $29. The company makes chips for smartphones, battery chargers, AC/DC adaptors, and image sensors, and likes to sell technological expertise rather than investing in factories.

Tung Le, the analyst, says TowerJazz is valued “undemandingly” and will gain from structurally growing markets like power and radio frequency. Its p/e ratio is 13x current earnings and 11x the CS estimate for 2018-9. He accepts the Tower estimate of its long-term revenues hitting $3.5 bn (up from $1.4 bn last year) and says it can more than double output from its existing fabs without having to capex. He thinks another $300 can result from modest spending and China joint venture deals (with Tacoma of Nanjing and Yeong Chin Machinery of Taiwan and China) can bring the total to $2.3 bn of sales long-term. So Atower will only have to find $1.2 bn directly, and he expects this to come with an acquisition. It expects to keep up its 30% cashflow margin level achieved last year for a long time, and he says this can actually prove conservative as it had cashflow margins as high as 40% in 2 prior years. He suggests that 35% is likely rather than merely 30%.

The only reason we don't see a strong buy here is that wafer prices are going up and they do account for about 10% of sales, meaning sales can fall from the increase. But TSEM is using multiple supplies and signing long-term deals to control the cost increases, and also is looking to cut other input costs as well. He says ATSEM has net cash of $2.6/sh adjusted for converts.

*Swedish Autoliv and its autonomous driving jv with Volvo, Zenuity, were selected to develop a first level 3 advanced driver assistance program for Geely, the Chinese car-maker. It will supply electronic control units and software for advanced drive assistance, radar systems, and mono- and stereo vision cameras. The jv operates in Sweden, Germany, and Detroit and has recently signed up TomTom Autostream for map content and updating. Geely, quoted in Hong Kong, owns stakes in Volvo (which it controls), Lotus, Malaysian Proton, and German Daimler.

*Fanuc, the Japanese maker of industrial robots (unfairly said to be only for making autos) today rose 2.5% in Tokyo. FANUY.

*However Hollysys is down 1/2%. HOLI is Chinese.

*Sociedade Quimica y Minera de Chile, SQM, was upped to hold from reduce by HSBC analysts.

*Zacks analysts downgraded BP plc for buy to hold today. Alaska is seeking to impose legacy responsibility for Prudhoe Bay oil sites sold to smaller extraction companies.

*Tencent will finance YY's Huya game live-streaming unit and gets a right to buy control of Huya in 2 to 3 years after the closing on the $462 mn financing roung that is going on now. More finance below.

TCEHY also is using its WeChat phone digital wallet app to pay to use buses or subways in China, although its system is marginally less widespread than one from Ailipay (from Alibaba, BABA).

*Delek Group of Israel and US Noble Energy are in talks to buy rights to use the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline to supply gas to Egypt from the Tamar and Leviathan offshore gas fields. EMG runs a pipeline linking El Arish in northeast Egypt to Ashkelon in Israel. It is currently is owned by the Evsen Group which includes several Israeli chemical firms, PTT of Thailand with 25%, and Egyptian General Petroleum Group with 10%.

The Leviathan partners also said yesterday that they will supply gas to the Jordanian electric company via direct pipeline and also the one via Eqypt to reach 10 bn cu meters of gas/yr. It will start production by the end of net year. It is owned 40% by NBL, 45% by a DGRLY sub, and 15% by Ratio Exploration of Israel.

When the Hebrew children left Egypt they did not turn left by mistake leaving the wealth of oil to the Arabs. What they got was a key way to link up with Arab economies when a this makes sense.

*Vale is rose in Europe on an assumption that its Canadian aluminim mines will escape the Trumpian tariffs, and its Brazilian iron mines perhaps also. But Americans sold it back down to $12.7.

*Cameco was upgraded from sell to hold by Argus Research. CCJ mines uranium in Canada and Kazakhstan. There are nearly 60 nuclear reactors under construction now, half of them in China.

*Your editor finally exited half her Cemex shares today, at $7.075.

Healthcare

*Roche launched a new blood analysis system, cobas M 11 which has been cleared by the FDA. It uses patented Bloodhound® tech to combine a blood cell counter, slide maker-stainer, and digital morophology and imaging analyzer in one lab system, saving time and money compared to traditional analysis. It also uses less patient blood.

*GlaxoSmithKline got EU permission for its daily Relvar Ellipta to be prescribed for patients with asthma that is already controlled. Until now scripts could only go to patients who were able to get by with a 2x/day Seretide Accuhaler squirt but a phase 2 trial showed that the GSK-Innoviva inhaler worked as well as Seretide. The GSK drug combines fluticason furoate, a corticosteroid, and a long acting beta agonist and now can be prescribed for patients aged over 12 in the whole European Union.

*Bavarian Nordic of Denmark will study a combination of its CV 301 cancer checkpoint inhibitor vaccine combined with Bristol Myers's Opdivo in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, to be run by liver cancer specialist Darren Carpizo of Rutgers Cancer Institute. About 80% of patients whose CR cancer has spread to the liver are not helped by surgery as the cancer returns there. Separately BMY got approval from our FDA for dosing its PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo every 4 weeks, the only targeted programmed death protein which is infused monthly. This helps patients who live far away for their hospitals. (I know BMY is American but it is also a stock both Patti the Biotech Maven and I own.) BVNRY reports Monday.

*Teva terminated itts license accord with Xenon Pharma and will turn back its shares, issued in 2012, for cancellation. Last year it cancelled trials for a topical analgesic from the Canadian firm after TV-4507 0 failed phase II trials.

It also borrowed $4.5 bn in senior notes upsized from $3.5 bn because of investor interest. The money will repay $2.3 bn in US$ and yen and, with cash on hand, its $1.5 bn in 1.4% senior notes due in 2018 and its $1.2 bn of 2.875% notes due in 2019. The new notes pay interest of 6% on the $1.25 bn maturing int 2022 and 6.75% on the same amount maturing in 2028, 3.25% on the euros 700 mn which come due in in 2022, and 4.5% on the euros 900 mn which come due in 2025. So Teva has stretched out its payments and delayed the the due date, but it is paying a price.

Lastly the Federal case against TEVA and its fellows of their customer men mis-selling opioids being heard in a Cleveland court has derailed as both sides seek more information. TEVA is back in the teens.

Finance

*BCE is selling C$500 mn of medium-term debentures in Canada but US persons are barred from buying. The 7-yr note issue will close Mar. 12 and are priced at $99.851 per note,m yielding 3.374%. They will be used to repay earnly the M-33 debentures coming due Feb. 26, 2019 for which it is paying 5.52%. More on restrictions on yankees below.

*The US Senate has removed from exclusion from the Dodd-Frank regulations of foreign banks which are smaller than the targeted US ones, now excluding mid-sized US banks. This means Banco Santander (and other EU banks) will continue to be regulated while purely US banks the same size will not. The reaction of analysts at ValuEngine was almost immediate, as they downrated SAN stock from strong buy to buy this morning. SAN will train financial sector people speaking Spanish in ways to cut their environmental footprint with an on-line course May 7-21.

*Greencore is selling its dessert business and got a new investor who has bought more shares as a result but will not provide details because I am not in the UK despite being a journalist and a GNCGY shareholder. I fudged it as I have a UK phone no. Boston global value investment firm Polaris Capital Management has taken a 6.1022% stake in Greencore. The news is good because the share has risen 3.61% today in London trading and is up 6.65% here. The food to go company is Irish and its staffer on the matter was stuck in Boston by the blizzard. I am trying to get Polaris to confirm but I figure they are snowed in too.

The stock is at GBX 184.95 but earlier hit GBX 186.3. The 5:1 ADR is at $10.43. Maybe if they let US people know what they are up to their share would do even better. It opened the year at GBX 221. It pays a 1% dividend on that and grossly underperforms the UK food producer index. It has 14 manufacturing sites in the US and only 8 in Britain, another reason to stop hiding information. As for selling ready meal Yorkshire puddings, I make my own.