Happy Friday everyone. Above all Sophie whose high school graduation I managed to watch virtually last night with help from her aunt, my daughter, another breakthrough in my tech-savvy. I then spent 45 minutes this morning trying to turn the Vimeo program off. While I still think the inflation risk is being ignored by the US market now that there will probably not be a tax increase and may be higher prices for longer, I am a typical worry-wort old enough to remember earlier inflationary cycles in the US and abroad. If I get to the office early enough I can sell while London is open.

Today I managed to put a sell order in on Renishaw, the UK metrology outfit that is being sold by management, but it was not filled.

However, I did sell most of my holdings in Antofagasta, the Chilean mining firm which Frida wrote up for us some years ago, which is listed in London for historic reasons. I am no fan of the Chilean right but the tight elections still worry me enough that I want to cut my risks. I sold today at $21.25/sh when the stock rose 3.74% today. ANFGF.

Image Source: Pixabay

Tech

*Naspers and Prosus this morning updated their plans for share exchanges because investors have been demanding that management avoid incentives which might lead it to sell too cheaply. After the duo met with UK investors Citi said the focus of sales will be mainly to cut the discount in NPSNY and PROSY shares of South Africa and The Netherlands respectively. MCHOY,

*Multichoice Group, which was spun off by NPSNY, is down 0.746% after reporting on FY 2021 today, hit by covid-19. MCHOY reported in rands and claimed a 1.5 bn level of cost-saving and a 7% level of operating leverage but no profits and offers 20.9 mn households, up 39% up to 4,600 hours of content, up 19%, Trading profits were R10.3 bn on sales revenues up 4% and its rest of Africa losses fell by R 1.5 bn helped by its 2020 20% stake in BetKing to let people bet on football games, now being raised to 49% which will cost $282 mn. Football was not a big need for the African masses last year and explains the losses based on local content with matches canceled. It offers linkage to homes and some cars from Kia and Hyundai. Subscription revenues rose 5% overall but only 1% in South Africa, its home market and ads plummeted by a third. It also deferred R1.1 bn in sports rights costs to a post-pandemic period but it paid out R500 mn to some of the local sports leagues.

MCHOY also offers Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube in Africa, These deals all have a foreign currency protection clause that allows discounts when the exchange rate falls. If this is not enough, MCHOY exits as it did in Angola and Mozambique in the last FY. It also sells insurance products and waivers of subs and debt when people die, including a funeral cover.

It took a while but the trading loss was R2.9 bn despite attempts to save money and boosted prices starting in Sept, almost all of it from South Africa itself. The rest of Africa's losses were R253 mn. Amazingly, for the second year in a row, we are getting a 2.5 bn rand dividend, a 4% yield.

*Microsoft MSFT is joining with American Airlines, Honeywell, and Rolls-Royce to do a SPAC with a real target company, Vertical Aerospace of Bristol, England which makes helicopter-like planes to act as taxis for people, medical needs, and cargo. It is merging with listed Broadstone Acquisition to build no emissions aircraft which also have low noise. Among those buying or leasing aircraft is Virgin Atlantic. Vertical says it will be profitable making as few as 100 plans a year. Other participants in the offering include Honeywell and Rolls-Royce who also have bought into the private investment offering. Among those buying or leasing the future aircraft is Virgin Atlantic. This is a SPAC with an equity value of as much as $2.2 bn based on the potential public offering at $10/sh. The offering is planned for the autumn for an NYSE listing. Special purpose acquisitions used to be mysteries but this is now changing.

*Taiwan Semiconductor, TSM, is planning to build a chip packaging unit outside the island it is named after, probably in the USA. Packaging integrated chips onto wafers. TSM also is building a chip manufacturing plant in Arizona costing $12 bn but it will take longer.

*Korean Coupang is up again today, by 2.1% after a CPNG non-Korean board member quit. CPNG.

Energy

*Azure Power of Mauritus, which sells solar panels to India, opened up 1.33% at $21.6which maybe because its sale of its rooftop non-core holdings to Radiance Renewables announced in April is moving forward. RR is a sub of the India climate fund Green Growth Equity managed by EverSource Capital. AZRE is now $21.2.

*Carmaker NIO is the winner among our shares today, up 8.03% after it won a Whole Vehicle Approval license for its ES8 from an unnamed European country.

*BP plc may sell off its Iraq operations to cut carbon from its stake in the huge and historic Rumailia oil field with China National Oil Co. Last month BP sold its Angola oil-fired to ENI SpA of Italy. BP is up 0.4%.

*Royal Dutch Shell is up 1.32% on no news. RDS-B.

*PLUG, Plug Power, which I bought this week, recuperated from its drop and is up 0.85% today after bullish options trades placed in very big volumes at $50. The share rose as high as $32.06 but settled at $31.76. I am now recommending Plug which is building a hydrogen supply network in Georgia to supply 15 tons/day of renewably produced hydrogen for fuel cell electric vehicles snf other users. It is a US firm that already has facilities in New York State and Pennsylvania.

*Algonquin is up 0.72% now flat YTD. AQN.

*Energy Fuels, UUUU, is up 2.45% after raising $50 mn with a stock sale.

Pharma

*I am also trying to figure out if the post Alzheimer risk at Eisai is really as big as the market says. Perhaps we should have exited when our FDA approved Aduhelm? I followed the advice of Jefferies which figured that even if it only works partly, and hung on to ESALY which is aiming to get approvals in Japan and Europe. Today the share is up 1.71% to $97 pushing back to triple digits, I hope. Biogen lost 3%.

*Possible good news on treating oldsters with pre-symptomatic oldsters with its alternative to Aduhelm boosted Swiss Roche today. RHHBY.

*It being Friday when Tel Aviv is shuttered, TEVA opened up at over $11, up 10% on enthusiasm among non-Israelis in Europe. It now is at $11.32, quite a big drop for no reason. While not a meme stock, TEVA is associated with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway which owns a chunk of it.

*Abcellera Biologic's insider sales of its 12 mn shares hit the stock all week. Today ABCL's price rose by 1.17% so maybe there is no more stock left. This is a seriously disappointing Canada share of more than half from our buy.

*Spanish Grifols gained on no news to $19.07. GRFS is now up 7.14% to $18.91. It works with blood plasma. It will pay its divvie on Monday but the ADR record date for that was June 3.

*Genfit of France gained 1.85% today so we are now only down 20% YTD. GNFT works as a cure for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis which is also the target of other research.

Finance

*Allianz, the German insurance group, was written up by Berenberg which noted that this is a highly diversified investment outfit with alternative investments in fund management and non-listed assets. We sold AZSEY.

*CBOE GlobalMarkets was rated mostly bearish today according to Benzinga but the average target price is up 5.71% at $155.57. The markets firm is hoping to create a venu for trading crypto-currencies. It was rated underweight by Morgan Stanley and buy by Deutsche Bank and Argus. It is down 0.1% today. CBOE used to be the Chicago Board Options Exchange but it has become global.

*Lazard (LAZ) is up 1% today as the fund manager reported higher assets under management in May of $278.6 bn of which $3.4 bn came from higher valuations, $1.9 bn from higher forex, and $1.1 bn down from outflows. Its LGI fund is barely down by 0.02% at $20.92.

*Mitsubishi Financial is up 0.67% to $28.23. MSBHF. Sumitomi Mitsui, SMFG, is down 0.55%