Dampening Exuberance

The bond sell-off halted today but the Fed's plans mean this will resume. Other central banks are also going to aim to dampen exuberance. Bitcoin is at a 3-mo high despite the arrest of two vendors of stolen bitcoins here.

Drugs

*Teva results hit the Israeli firm hard as it missed forecasts of a 9% sales rise and issued much lower 2022 forecasts. Quarterly revenue was down 8% because of pandemic stockpiling and generic competition for Copaxone, while sales fell to $129 mn. The US, TEVA's largest market, saw a 25% drop in sales of Teva's own generics.

Non-GAAP gross profits fell about 1% although gross profit margins were better at 56.%+ versus prior Q1 levels of 52.3%. It recorded a GAAP loss of $159 mn

Full-year non-GAAP net however was up $100 mn at $2.9 bn. Teva fell about 10% in UK trading.

Hands, World, Map, Global, Earth, Globe, Continents

Image Source: Pixabay

Most of our drug stocks rose over Teva's troubles: Roche (RHHBY) up 2.4%; Novartis (NVS) up 0.4%; Zymeworks (ZYME) up 4.7%; Vir up 1%; Novacure (NVCR) up 3.7%; Pfizer (PFE) up 0.56%; Eli Lilly up 1.77%; Merck (MRK) up despite a 1 cent lower earnings forecast of $1.81. This is because they expect TEVA will have to cut back its copycat drugs this year for lack of funding. Even Oncugen rose 1.12%.

*Glaxo Smith Kline GSK Q4 earnings hit 69 cents/sh on sales that were flat. Earnings however were down 24% at GBP 87.6/sh.

*Japanese Eisai (ESALY)

Energy

*Cameco beat and raised its dividend. The Canada uranium miner, as I predicted, will reopen its McArthur River mine. CCJ earned 6 cents(Canadian)/sh vs consensus forecast of 2 cents and its dividend is now double the prior level at 12 cents. It also forecast that it will produce as much as 60% more uranium by 2024, but long-range numbers may not come to pass. The main reason it rose is that heating oil here hit a 7 years high.

*Energy Fuels (UUUU) rose 7.11%. Uranium is hot thanks to CCJ.

*Shel lost an L and now is also threatened with new taxes. Unlike BP which also did astonishingly well, Shell still has to deal with the Dutch.

*Schlumberger Ltd (SLB) rose 1.5%. Its systems help find oil and gas. Its last report beat the consensus forecast but its next one may not.

Tech

*Taiwan Semiconductor got a higher forecast of earnings, $1.29 up a penny. TSM.

*Veoneer (sold) is moving its HQ from Bermuda to the UK in order to look more respectable. VNE.

*There was good news too. Latin American Mercado Libre (MELI) rose 1.52% to $1051 beating the tech and S&P indexes again. It earlier tose 3.77% today. This made up for its losses in Jan. of 1.73%,well under the losses of other retailers. It is expected to earn 89 cents per share when it reports Feb. 28 pre-market. The stock is up 3.77% today after Zacks Consensus (of analysts) predicted that its sales would be up over 50% year/year t $2 bn and that its earnings would rise 187%. Sell half.

*South African Naspers, a back door way to own Softbank, is up 2.4%. NPSNY.

*Thermo Electron rose 0.7% today. TMO.

*Samsung revealed that it is using the Qualcomm MX65 modem (AKA Snapdragon). I own QCOM as well as Samsung. 

*Autoliv (sold) fell today. ALV.

Financials

*Sampo Oyj rose 3.3% in Finland. It is a conglomerate. SAXPY.

*Hollysys of Hong Kong now is nearly half-owned by Bermuda's Pandamus to protect it from Chinese pressure. 

*The CBOE options stock target was raised to $1.61 from 1.58. CBOE is a US share I own.

*Gold is up again. GLD.

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