There is good news at last. My long-term web hosting firm Blue Host will be converting my upgraded drupal site data to WordPress over the next 3-4 weeks after all. Blue Host is being acquired and has become much less aggressive to clients.

Thursday stock markets tend to be heavy with results. The continuing saga of loser President Trump's attempts to force a recount unlikely to change the election's outcome continues to befuddle markets.

Mexican Presidente Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refuses to congratulate Joe Biden because he insists Mexico is not a US colony. None of the major countries which sent good wishes to the winning candidate is considered to be a US colony. Mexico hasn't been anyone's colony since it executed the Emperor Maximilian.

Maybe AMLO was thinking about Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos who was arrested on a visit to the US last month for being in the pay of the country's drug cartels. Mexico's police commander Reyes Arzate was arrested early this year for accepting cartel bribes. Both were appointed by right-wing governments, not by AMLO, but despite the warrants he made no move to bring them to justice in their homeland. Where is Zapata when we need him?

US jobless levels fell sharply last week but are still abnormally high.

Tech & Tel

*Fanuc FANUY overnight reported in Japan and fittingly, for a robot company, I couldn't find anything but a robotic chart for the firm, whose stock rose 2.3% at the opening here to $23.45. Another robotics firm, Kuka of Germany was featured by one outfit and Chinese Hollysys by another. My brokerage had nothing despite now being in bigger. In Japan, it hit a 52-week high at ¥24535, and here hit a YTD high at $23.34 Motley fool gives it 5 stars but no reason. Nomura rates it buy with a target price of ¥25,000 up from prior ¥y21,000. Jefferies raised it to ¥27,000 from 24,000.

In the end, Dow Jones came through. Fanuc last quarter had sales up 20% sequentially, and 11% from prior H2 at ¥121.152 bn. Its gross income gained 34.23% to ¥42.253 bn, and its gross profit margin hit 35.84%. Its SG&A was up a modest 2.99% mostly for R&D and its non-operating income and expense increases nearly balanced out.

Quarterly pretax income grew 90.87% from prior quarter (when it was negative 43%) and pretax margin topped 19.84% from a long period of zero. That means taxes were moderate so consolidated net income was ¥19.821 bn, up 109%+ or ¥99.16 per share. Note please that the ADR is not 1:1 and the data I got was for FANUF, the Japanese share traded here. I have not converted the Yen. Once I resume getting revenues from renewals, I will be able to get share data from Chris in Japan.

*Israeli Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) reported profits and sales which both beat consensus. Its eps at 14¢ beat by a penny. Its sales came in at $310,2 mn, down 0.6% from prior Q3, but $53 mn ahead of consensus forecast. It raised its sales target for Q4 to $340 mn from prior $325 mn. Adjusted EBTIDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) forecast is also bullish. Despite all this, TSEM stock which gained a lot recently fell on double normal volumes by 4.8% as a consequence of the US tech wreck.

*Telco equipment and operating firms Ericsson ERIC, Nokia NOK, NTT Documo, and MultiChoice are all up. The odd man out is Vodafone VOD, down 0.5%.

*While we no longer directly own shares in Tencent, it does affect prices for our stocks Naspers of South Africa and Prosus of Europe. TCEHY adjusted EBITDA cash flow rose 26% to RMB47.85 bn and eps hit RMB 396. Sales in the quarter rose 29% to RMB 125.44 bn. The trouble with this nice result is that with China cracking down on both Hong Kong's Legco and its tech companies, results are now ancient history. So our picks NPSNY (up 2%) and PROSY (up 3.4%) must grow on their own. MCHOY will help.

Energy

*Chinese electric car-maker NIO is back up today, by 9%+.

*Algonquin Power & Utilities AQN reports its Q3 after the close today. We are in deeper than before thanks to buying Atlantica Yield. AY is up 1.53% today in anticipation.

*Hoegh LNG, whose preferred shares we own thanks to Gen. Joe Shaefter, USAF-Ret, a Norway expert because he was stationed there, will report on its Q3 Nov. 19 at 7 am Central European time. I will leave it to Joe to cover. The share rose a half percent on the news of its results date.

*BP Plc and Danish wind-farm group Orsted are jointly developing a hydrogen project in Germany at Lingen refinery. It will use wind power to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen which will replace up to 1/5 of the natural gas used to generate hydrogen at the plant. BP says it will use hydrogen and carbon capture to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases. Hydrogen can be used as feedstock in oil refineries although it is currently more expensive that crude for this purpose.

*Softbank when it is not plotting to move to the Gulf is also aiming to invest in electric vehicles, in this case, a motorized scooter from German Tier Mobility. TM is close to becoming profitable (excluding debt) and will collect $250 mn from the Japanese group's “Vision Fund”. Masayoshi Son joins the Abu Dhabi investment body, Goodwater Capital, Northzone, and White Star Capital in the TM funding round. It like our Chinese electric car firm Nio offers swappable batteries leased rather than sold to buyers. This enables them to be replaced with full batteries without drivers/scooters hanging around for charging.

*Azure Power AZRE recouped part of its loss yesterday and opened over $30.

Drug stocks

*Beigene BGNE of China is not subject to a crackdown by the government and it, therefore, rose 0.85% today.

*Compugen CGEN is up another 4.6% today, over $13.

*Japanese Eisai gained another 0.25% today. I tipped ESALY as a likely winner despite the failure of partner Biogen's Alzheimer's drug late last week. Later it fell with other drug majors.

*Glaxo despite its adjuvants is down 2.9%. It will provide adjuvants to Canada's Medcago phase 2-3 clinical trials against Covid-19 but GSK fell as it is ex-div.

*Spanish Grifols GRFS is up another 1.6% today. It will have a role in covid-19 testing notably in the US where it is adding sites.

*Canadian Zymeworks ZYME, picked by Martin Ferera, is top winner, up 5.21% as ZYME hits the conference trail.

Money

*Sampo Oiy is undeer pressure from its major institutional owner Elliott Mgm to sell more of its Nordea stake or distribute it to shareholders, according to the Financial Times. It trades at a discount to pure insurers despite being the best European underwriter, according to Elliott, at 15x earnings vs 20x. However, SAXPF is down 3% today.

*Investor's Patricia Industries sub divested a 40% share in 3 Scandinavian telcos to Hutchison and an independent cell tower manager. Rumor has it that it will also divest its stake in KPN, the Dutch telco.

*AIG Asia (AAIGF) and Hang Seng Bank (HSNGF) finally fell from their perches over the Chinese crackdowns.

*Kirkland Lake Gold KL is up on realization that Trump can make plenty of trouble before his exit.

*Banco Latino-americano de Comercio Exterieur BLX fell 0.6% on fear that Biden may be treated like a Latin American challenger to the regime. I think we are not that bad.

*Banco Santander fell 2.92% today in Madrid after announcing that its German consumer bank will issue euros 5 bn of asset-backed fixed-rate notes alongside French Société générale. The assets backing them are mostly vehicles (including trucks, campers, and motorcycles.) SAN fell 5.9% at the opening but then reversed upward by 0.61% to hit $2.58. It later fell again because it is up nearly 40% in the past month.

*Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia BNS fell 1.23% today in a general downgrade of banks over the virus.

*Cameco CCJ raised its dividend from 0.6091 to 0.7 last week. Kirkland Lake Gold, raised its dividend by 50% to 18.75 cents/sh (US).