The first nice day this year and there is too much news to knock off early. Luckily a lot of the news is good including a buyout of a stock we own thanks to Gen. Joe Shaefer, USAF-ret, who is our Norway expert because he was posted there during his military service. Now he runs a newsletter with which we trade news and manages money.

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Green from green

*Our big winner is Norwegian-owned but run from Bermuda, Höegh LNG Partners HMLP. A JV is planned by the lead Norway shareholders, Leif Höegh &Co with a sub of Morgan Stanley, Lanus Holdings Ltd, to buy the publicly listed shares of our shipping company for NOK 23.5/sh. The Norwegian company only owns 46% of the LNG shipping firm which we bought into at Joe's urging. The offer is up 36% from the price last Friday and also 32% over the 30-day volume-weighted price. The parent company will delist from Oslo. You get to vote on the takeover on March 30 at 10 am in Hamilton Bermuda. The US price of HMLP-A, the target stock, is down o.2% because some shareholders have not declared their ownership, and others are frightened of the Krone. So there will be capital gains taxes but I love to pay these on my gains.

*Nio, the Chinese electric vehicle company, plans to list in Hong Kong this year according to Reuters. A seekingalpha writer named “Equal Ocean” says the listing will boost NIO stock to $40 and in fact, the share tossed 16.8% today to $41.13. China electric car sales in Feb. this year were 7x those last year although down from Jan. because of the Chinese new year, at 97,000 for all brands.

*Cemex going green by reducing clinker and opening more small cement-making sites in Europe and the US will now take these measures in the Caribbean. Eduardo Garcia writes in sentidocomun.co.mx that CX will boost the output of its Dominican Republic plant by a third to offer localized service to the Caribbean islands from there rather than Mexico. CX was rated risky because so much of its sales in 2020 were for real estate rather than infrastructure.

*Japanese factory robotics firm Fanuc regained 2.5% after falling Mon. with Nasdaq. FANUY.

*Energy Fuels rare earths recovery system is real and being run from Lakewood CO, and UUUU rose 5.1% on the news.

*Cosan which confused us all yesterday gained over 2% today on its new listing to come as CSAN and its planned Cosan Day. It will take a week to raise funding and relist. CZZ.

Tech & Tel

*UK Vodafone will sell its Euroland cell towers for 22.5 to 29 euros. VOD is up 3% on the news.

*Mercado Libre which fell with US internet stock is up 6% today ($80/sh) to $1449.61. It is an overweight says JP Morgan. MELI.

*BCE, a yield stock added to last month gained 0.5% today to hit $46.1 (US), a new high, before falling back to $45.8.

*South African Naspers, NPSNY, and Dutch Prosus, PROSY, both gained because of Tencent. We own them in their own rights and not for the Hong Kong outfit.

*Norway reverse vending machine firm Tomra is weird. Its unsponsored ADR, TMRAF, is up $1.42% at $43.48, and the sponsored one, TMRAY, is up 4.53% to $43.4. It may have to do with the taxes Norway imposes.

*Qualcomm a US share I bought to get a hold of unlisted Israelis, missed on Q1 sales and cut its Q2 forecasts because of the chips shortage. QCOM.

*Nokia gained 3.36% today as tech recovered. NOK.

Drugs

*Teva rose 2.53% today on news that it will offer the first US generic of Azopt to treat ocular hypertenion and glaucome which boost eye pressure. The bad news is that CEO Käre Schultz this month twice sold 285,000 shares of Teva options in his 4^th and 5^th sale in 2021. In fact, almost all the non-Israeli execs of Teva sell their options as soon as they can and this has to be reported to the SEC as it affects the ADR price. The problems of TEVA are not helped by this greed.

*Compugen is up 14.34% today on the publication of an article in the AACR Cancer Discovery journal by its chief scientist Drew Pardol of Johns Hopkins U on the DNAM-1 checkpoint effect on cancer from its drugs TIGIT, PVRIG, and others. DNAM-1 is a natural killer cell that recognizes ligands over-expressed by tumors from their DNA. CGEN.

*Zymeworks of BC, Canada, tipped by Martin Ferrera who lives there, is up 5.4%. ZYME.

Finance

*ABB, a holding of Investor AB which both Joe and I own and which we both opted to buy directly last month, is up 2.5% today. IVSBF is a proxy for a Scandinavian fund that doesn't exist any longer. It owns a chunk of Q which operates also in Sweden. 

*SPDR Gold is up 2.6%. A writer called "Fun Trading" suggests buying Kirkland Lake Gold, KL, which we own.

*Banco Santander lost its gains from Monday which may be linked to its being a female-headed business, down 2.52%. SAN.

Food for thought

*Our Mexican multinational bakery firm Grupo Bimbo was written up in the March 8 issue of The Economist. It treats bread and cakes as comfort foods for North Americans, citing GRBMF's 22% rise in sales and 84% rise in profits in 2020 during the pandemic. But pan is not about comfort. It is the staff of life and the closure of our local commission bakery has forced us to buy supermarket bread which is usually icky. Bimbo is a big winner because its staff of life is needed north of the Rio Grande.