We are now planning a trip to London so I may be filing less fully because my day will start earlier. I am desperate to escape lockdown and also to visit our growing family there, my new grandniece.

Today we have two reporting companies.

*Tomra Systems of Norway with two ticker symbols in the US reported on its Q1 results at 5:30 am my time. I was not awake. It rose 4.08% in Norwegian trading on good news. It had revenues of Norwegian Krone of 2.291 bn, up 3% but its recycling-sorting business dropped by a third from the prior year. Collection (of empties) however saw sales up 21%. It now has a new product line, sorting small diamonds.

Gross margins were up a fraction, to 42.5% from 42.3% in Q1 2020. Operating expenses were flat at NOK 733 mn. Earnings before interest, taxation, and amortization (not including depreciation) was up a bit at NOK 240 mn from prior year's NOK 228 mn. Cashflow was NOK 269 mn, up from prior Q1 level of NOK 265 mn. TMRAY-TMRAF closed the quarter with its orderbook showing NOK 1.385 bn in orders a new high. TMRAY stock is now at $49.37 bid and $50.07 ask while TMRAF is at $49.71 bid and $50.03 ask. It did not report quarterly profits. There will be an annual dividend for 2020 payable May 7 at 35.87 US cents, ex-div May 5, a yield of 0.72%.

image source

Energy

*Schlumberger Ltd of Curação today reported on its Q1 results which were good. It net income was $299 mn or 21¢/sh, naturally not as high as the prior pre-pandemic level of $324 mn and 27¢/sh. But it beat the consensus forecast by 2%. Revenue was down 30% y/y to $5.22 bn, not only because of the virus but also because SLB sold some North American businesses in Q4. Sales would have been flat from Q4. However, they were down 23% from Q1 2020. The big drop was in North America not just from the asset sales, but because of covid-19 shutting exploration drilling. Revenues dropped 17% from the Dec. quarter and 55% from the prior Q1. Latin America and Middle East sales were up. The company expects North American revenues to grow this year but did not pick a number. CEO Olivier Le Peuch predicted that oil demand could rise by as much as 6 mn barrels/day in North America by the end of this year. SLB provides services to oil and gas drillers based on technology developed by the founding Alsatian brothers a century ago. It doesn't count as a green stock.

The share was up 1.4% in European trading and then opened down 2.51% and dropped further before going up. It is very volatile but up 2.56% at this moment.

*Energy Fuels, UUUU, today announced that the US Dept of Energy has agreed to pay $1.75 mn for feasability studies on producing rare earth from monazite by the company and Penn State. This supplements an earlier grand of $150,000 last year, a new order of magnitude. UUUUwas up 5.67% to $5.57. The study will explore cost to produce different rare earth oxides, metals, and alloys from Hyperion Metals in Tennessee and from mixed rare earths from Utah. It is now up 4.6%.

*Mexico's Cemex bought a new floating dredge to deliver production minerals from a Berlin firm, writes Eduardo Garcia in sentidocomun.com.mx. It will have capacity of 400 metric tonnes/hour and lower energy costs. Price was not given as Mexican inflation is at 6.05% annualized as of mid-April, normally a month of low price rises, but not this year. CX gained 2.9% here. Irish CRH rose 0.63%.

*Electric vehicle firm Nio is up 2.43% thanks to a new buy rating for the share from CLSA, a French bank, which also set a target price of $50 for NIO which opened up even higher.

*Vale, which hasn't cleaned up its tailings dams, reports after the close Mon. We own it indirectly as Canadian Franco-Nevada bought 14.7% of VALE bonds from Brazil Development Bank. We own Franco Nevada which accounts for 3.7% of the holdings of the Canadian General Fund, CGRIF.

*Swiss ABB, maker of electric helpers is up 1%. We also own it via Investor A/B, a fund managed by the Wallenberg Bank. IVSBF.

*Höegh LNG Partners LP, HMLP of Bermuda, is distributing a divvie of 44 cents per quarter, or $1.76/yr. It is a floating LNG tanker service, which runs on LNG itself. It gained 0.62% on the news.

*Azure Power of Mauritius which makes rooftop solar systems for India, is up 2.21%. I am not sure if solar helps provide oxygen which India desperately needs because of its Covid-19 outbreak. AZRE.

*Canadian Solar, CSIQ, is up 2% today, Earth Day +1.

Technology

*Tencent managed to circumvent Indian blockage of its purchase of the Share Chat platform by buying $225 mn of convertible debt from two European entities. TECHY rose 4.8% on its audacity. I think it won't get away with this. One of the Europeans may be our Prosus PROSY, but I'm guessing.

*Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure PLC AY is up 1.9%. Its part-owner, Algonquin AQN, a US-Canadian ute is down 0.5%. Usually, they track each other.

*South Korean Amazon rival Coupang today gained 6.17% and put us near the black with CPNG.

*Latin American Amazon rival Mercado Libre, MELI, is up 2% to $1594.67 in sympathy.

*Chip shortages boosted both Taiwan Semi TSM and Israeli-American Tower Semi TSEM, up 2% and 1.32% resp.

Finance

*AmEx hurt the US bank sector and one result was higher prices for Sumitomo Mitsui Finance, SMFG, up 1.68%, and Mitsubishi Finance, MSBHF, up 0.11%.

*Both our Lazard plays, LAZ the company and LGI its US cheap-overhead global closed-end fund are up, by 7% and 1.11% resp.

Drugs

*Bristol-Myers' plaque psoriasis drug deucravacitinib aced two phase III trials buy BMY fell 0.33%on fear of a House Democratic bill to cut US drug costs by checking on foreign drug prices. Merck MRK fell.

*GlaxoSmithKline won EU approval of its Jemperl drug against recurrent and advanced endometrial (uterine) cancer and managed a slight rise of 0.09%, despite the US drug price bill. GSK.

*Novartis fell 0.26% on the threat. NVS is Swiss so naturally evil. Roche, RHHBY, fell 0.45%.

*Danish Novo Nordisk which essentially controls the price of insulin, fell 0.19%. NVO.

*AstraZeneca, AZN, was hit harder, down 0.9%. Spain's Grifols is down 3.7%, GRFS.

*Takeda is up one buck. TAK.

*Dr. Reddy's of India is down 1.37%, RDY will not trade in its home market until Sunday and the Coomb Mela and Covid-19 are scary there. It is licensed to produce the Russian jab. It opened down 1.6%.

*TEVA is down 1.62% because Israel is shut for Sabbath and it has a bad rep on opioids.

Compugen is up 0.6%, CGEN. Enlivex is up 1.7%, ENLV. Novacure is up 3.14%, NVCR.

*Small cap drug stocks are all over the map, AbCellera, ABCL up 0.2% and fellow Canadian Zymeworks, ZYME, up 0.81%.