On Monday, banks and NBFCs (non-banking finance companies) were among the biggest losers on the Indian stock exchanges. ICICI Bank ended 10.56 percent lower, HDFC 9.98 percent down, HDFC Bank 7.89 percent lower, SBI was down 5.88 percent and NSE's banking

Brokerage firm, Motilal Oswal is bullish on the stock of Larsen & Toubro and has set a price target of Rs 1,200 on the stock, as against its current market price of Rs 825.

Brokerage firm, Motilal Oswal is bullish on the stock of Jindal Steel and Power and says there could be an upside of as much as 75 per cent on the stock. Here are a few highlights from the Motilal Oswal report.

Archives, Room Use Only - HE7797.N49 N49 1852

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Marwar Chamber of Commerce and Industry has urged the district administration to allow businessmen and traders having shops in areas under curfew to visit their establishments and take stock of the condition of material and goods.

Which category does your business belong to?

Thieves broke into a liquor vend in Manimajra and stole 204 liquor boxes worth around Rs 13 lakh on Friday.

The bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS) secretes many toxic effectors to gain advantage in interbacterial competition and for eukaryotic host infection. The cognate immunity proteins of these effectors protect bacteria from their own effectors. PldB is a T6SS trans-kingdom effector in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that can infect both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. Three proteins, PA5086, PA5087 and PA5088, are employed to suppress the toxicity of PldB-family proteins. The structures of PA5087 and PA5088 have previously been reported, but the identification of further distinctions between these immunity proteins is needed. Here, the crystal structure of PA5086 is reported at 1.90 Å resolution. A structural comparison of the three PldB immunity proteins showed vast divergences in their electrostatic potential surfaces. This interesting phenomenon provides an explanation of the stockpiling mechanism of T6SS immunity proteins.

The structure of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa T6SS PldB immunity protein PA5086 is reported at 1.9 Å resolution. Comparison of PA5086 with its homologs PA5087 and PA5088 showed great similarities in sequence and structure, but vast divergences in electrostatic potential surfaces.

The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the SVF Foundation have launched a new collaboration to strengthen rare and endangered livestock breed conservation through the preservation […]

The post Smithsonian & SVF launch rare-breed livestock conservation partnership appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma (L) attends the company's initial price offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014 in New York City. ; Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Alibaba's stock is surging as the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse begins its first day trading as a public company.

The stock opened at $92.70 and nearly hit $100 on the New York Stock Exchange Friday, a gain of 46 percent from the initial $68 per share price set Thursday evening.

At Friday's opening price, the company is worth $228.5 billion, more than companies such as Amazon, Ebay and even Facebook.

Jubilant CEO Jack Ma stood on the NYSE trading floor Friday as eight Alibaba customers, including an American cherry farmer and a Chinese Olympian, rang the opening bell.

"We want to be bigger than Wal-Mart," Ma told CNBC shortly after the opening Bell. "We hope in 15 years people say this is a company like Microsoft, IBM, Wal-Mart, they changed, shaped the world."

On Thursday, Alibaba and the investment bankers arranging the initial public offering settled on a price of $68 per share. The company and its early investors raised $21.8 billion in the offering, which valued Alibaba at $168 billion in one of the world's biggest ever initial public offerings.

The company, which is trading under the symbol "BABA," has enjoyed a surge in U.S. popularity over the past two weeks as investors met with executives, including its colorful founder Jack Ma. As part of the so-called roadshow, would-be investors heard a sales pitch that centered on Alibaba's strong revenue growth and seemingly endless possibilities for expansion. Demand was so high that the company raised its offering price to $66 to $68 per share from $60 to $66 per share on Monday.

The main reason investors appear breathless about the 15-year old Alibaba: It offers an investment vehicle that taps into China's burgeoning middle-class.

Alibaba's Taobao, TMall and other platforms account for some 80 percent of Chinese online commerce. Most of Alibaba's 279 million active buyers visit the sites at least once a month on smartphones and other mobile devices, making the company attractive to investors as computing shifts away from laptop and desktop machines.

And the growth rate is not expected to mature anytime soon. Online spending by Chinese shoppers is forecast to triple from its 2011 size by 2015. Beyond that, Alibaba has said it plans to expand into emerging markets and eventually, Europe and the U.S.

"There are very few companies that are this big, grow this fast, and are this profitable," said Wedbush analyst Gil Luria.

Alibaba operates an online ecosystem that lets individuals and small businesses buy and sell. It doesn't directly sell anything, compete with its merchants, or hold inventory.

"The business model is really interesting. It's not just an eBay, it's not an Amazon, it's not a Paypal. It's all of that and much more," said Reena Aggarwal, a professor at Georgetown.

Like China's consumer and Internet market, Alibaba is still growing rapidly. The company's revenue in its latest quarter ending in June surged 46 percent from last year to $2.54 billion while its earnings climbed 60 percent to nearly $1.2 billion, after subtracting a one-time gain and certain other items.

In its last fiscal year ending March 31, Alibaba earned $3.7 billion, making it more profitable than eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. combined. Amazon ended Thursday with a market value of about $150 billion while eBay's market value stood at $67 billion.

Alibaba, is based in Hangzhou in Eastern China, Ma's hometown. The company got started in 1999 when Ma and 17 friends developed a fledgling e-commerce company on the cusp of the Internet boom. Today, Alibaba's main platforms are its original business-to-business service Alibaba.com, consumer-to-consumer site Taobao and TMall, a place for brands to sell to consumers.

And while there's plenty of growth left in China, Ma has recently hinted about plans to expand beyond those borders.

"We hope to become a global company, so after we go public in the U.S., we will expand strongly in Europe and America," Ma said to a group of reporters in Kowloon on Monday.

Alibaba offered 320.1 million shares for a total offering size of $21.77 billion. Underwriters have a 30-day option to buy up to about 48 million more shares. That means the offering size could be as much as $25 billion

The IPO's fundraising handily eclipses the $16 billion Facebook raised in 2012, the most for a technology IPO. If all of its underwriters' options are exercised, it would also top the all-time IPO fundraising record of $22.1 billion set by the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in 2010.

Yahoo, which has been struggling to grow for years, made a windfall $8.28 billion by selling 121.7 million of is Alibaba shares. And founder Jack Ma sold 12.75 million shares worth $867 million.

Money manager Adrian Day discusses a general approach to the market, as well as recent developments at several companies on his list, including some buy recommendations, despite being overall cautious.

Source: Keith Schaefer for Streetwise Reports   04/28/2020

An entirely new—and highly profitable—industry is being borne out in 2020—TeleHealth.

CloudMD Software & Services Inc. (DOC:CSE; DOCRF:OTCQB; 6PH:FSE) is my favorite way to play teleHealth. It's growing quickly with over 100,000 patients registered on its app and over 3000 doctors in 8 provinces in its Electronic Medical Records—EMR—system. It has MULTIPLE revenue streams and it just moved into Canada's largest market—Ontario—setting up an even faster growth rate.

The recent spread of coronavirus is only accelerating this. COVID-19 has forever changed how we all will think about visiting a hospital or seeing our doctor. We really don't want to do that at all, if possible. It will have a very positive and long lasting impact on teleHealth.

teleHealth companies in Canada are getting paid more money for services than bricks-and-mortar clinics, and have a fraction of the costs. Doctors want more of it, patients want more of it, government wants more of it—and the Market REALLY wants more of it. Everybody wins here; there is no downside.

The rapid scale-up and profitability is key for investors.

The stock market is now recognizing this trend—in spades. You can see it in the stock chart of the U.S. leader in teleHealth, Teladoc Health Inc. (TDOC:NYSE).

While the market plummeted Teladoc's business and share price soared.

Now that a firm trend is in place—and teleHealth is one that makes a lot of sense—I'm looking for the junior with the best leverage to this new long term trade.

CloudMD is established, growing quickly and trading at a fraction of its peers.

The average multiple of competitors in the sector trade at 5-7x revenue, and CloudMD is trading way below that at 2.5x per revenue. I'll have more on those comps in a moment.

But realize that the Canadian use of telemedicine is still just a fraction of where it is in the U.S—so the quick, early upside is even bigger.

Literally the Canadian Version of Teladoc Health

The story with this stock is very simple. CloudMD is literally the Canadian version of Teladoc Health—just at an earlier stage in the growth curve.

The market desperately wants to own teleHealth right now (see also the stock charts of LVGO-NASD and CATS-NASD). I see CloudMD as the best way to do that in the junior sector (where the leverage is!).

For this stock to have a major run all that needs to happen is for institutional investors to wake up to the fact that the company exists. That's happening now with the company entering the province of Ontario—which has 14.5 million people, over one-third of Canada's population.

CloudMD is a fully integrated health care company—kind of like a hospital-in-the-sky. They do have five bricks-and-mortar clinics, but they also own their own EMR—Electronic Medical Records—system that operates in eight provinces and is used by over 3,000 doctors and is supported by an in-house 25 person development team. They have their own CloudMD app—which has over 100,000 registered patients already.

Folks, we really are in front of the institutions on this one. I don't have room in this article to even talk to you about the depth and credibility of CEO Dr. Essam Hamza, but after several conversations with him I can say that shareholders are in very good hands.

The EMR gives CloudMD a recurring monthly revenue stream, which The Street loves. The app gives them high margin fees from doctors, specialists and groups like massage therapists and counselors. These people are revenue, not costs. As I said, full hospital-in-the-sky. Multiple revenue sources with lower costs.

To schedule a virtual doctor's appointment all that a patient has to do is download the free CloudMD app and then arrange an appointment with one of the doctors. There is zero charge for the patient and they can see a doctor very quickly.

CloudMD can scale up the number of patients VERY quickly—and they are.

Every aspect of healthcare that's very fractured and disjointed will now be in the one CloudMD ecosystem.

Everyone wins with this system. Patients, doctors, the medical system, society, even investors. Everyone.

TeleHealth Is MUCH More Profitable Than Clinics

Doctors who have signed up with CloudMD work remotely from home or wherever they are (like their winter home down south). The rapid scale-up potential excites me. CloudMD can add in unlimited number of doctors and patients—so it has a virtually unlimited ability to scale quickly with little incremental cost.

Profit margins are wide and there is no cap on the number of customers that can be handled.

After a patient has an appointment, CloudMD bills the government directly just like every bricks-and-mortar clinic in Canada does. CloudMD records 100% of the revenue and gets to keep 30% of the billing for every patient that is seen through telemedicine, which is actually 10% more than what a bricks-and-mortar clinic receives. That is because the governments are trying to push teleHealth.

The doctor gets the other 70% and doesn't have to deal with any headaches of commuting or running a business.

Without the overhead of a bricks-and-mortar clinic, AND more revenue—CloudMD will be much more profitable than traditional health care stocks.

Faster scale, more cash flow. And they just entered Canada's largest market. This is the right stock in the right market at the right time.

When CloudMD goes from one doctor to 10 doctors to 100 doctors working at the same time, they don't have to build more clinics. They don't have to create more rooms for them or hire more staff. They just sign them on. That's it.

And we are not just talking about family doctors. They are also adding specialists and third party services like counseling and physiotherapists to the platform—and again, all these people are revenue, not costs.

That's the great thing about this business model. It's very scalable, very easy, and it grows very quickly.

CloudMD has been growing its recurring SAAS (Software-as-a-Service) revenue by 30% YoY with its EMR system. But this year the company is expecting that doctor growth to be much much higher—with a new full time sales team and the coronavirus pandemic. SaaS revenue is highly lucrative!

Consumer growth (patients) using the CloudMD app is growing even faster. And the recent COVID-19 situation will only turbocharge that.

Another Revenue Stream, Another Win-Win

There's another angle here—pharmacies. CloudMD says they will partner with more than 150 pharmacies in 2020 alone who are afraid of losing prescription business to Amazon (AMZN-NASD).

Those pharmacies are paying $500 a month for CloudMD kiosks to be in their pharmacies—where customers can get a prescription from a doctor on demand.

This keeps the customer in the pharmacy for their prescription—not out to see a doctor and then off to Costco to get it filled.

Pharmacies that don't see the writing on the wall will become the blockbusters of the industry and get left behind.

With the kiosk in the pharmacy, a person can just see a doctor right away, within 10 minutes, and walk the prescription back to the pharmacist.

Buy-outs Are Happening at High Valuations

We know that these businesses are worth.

Grocery giant Loblaws purchased QHR—another Canadian based EMR company—for $3.10/share or 7.5X revenue. Note that QHR's former Chairman Mark Kohler recently joined CloudMD's Board of Directors.

Teladoc bought a company out of Quebec just two months ago called InTouch for about US$600 million, which again is about 7.5X revenue. Teladoc itself trades at more than 10X revenue.

CloudMD trades at 2.5X revenue, less than a third of recent transactions. Meanwhile the company is poised to grow revenues at a high double digit rate for the foreseeable future.

TeleHealth is the future of how our healthcare is delivered.

Everyone has always expected that the growth would be just like what Netflix experienced with streaming, shaped like a hockey stick. The hockey stick shape is slow at the start as early adopters move and then straight up as the mainstream catches up with plot.

The demand for teleHealth from COVID-19 just took the flat part of that hockey stick out of the equation and instead took the industry directly to the exponential growth curve.

The jumping off point for teleHealth is here and I think CloudMD is the best pure-play teleHealth stock right now.

TeleHealth is to healthcare what streaming was to video rentals, and what Amazon was to retail. IT IS THE FUTURE.

Now is the time for investors to get on board, especially in Canada where virtual healthcare only accounts for 0.15% of the market and the growth curve will be much steeper.

And for me, that's CloudMD. It's the new normal. I'm long.

Keith Schaefer is editor and publisher of the Oil & Gas Investments Bulletin. He has a degree in journalism and has worked for several Canadian dailies but has spent over 15 years assisting public resource companies in raising exploration and expansion capital.

Disclosure:
1) Keith Schaefer: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: CloudMD. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: CloudMD. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: None. Additional disclosures are listed below.
2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with CloudMD. Please click here for more information.
3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.
4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.
5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of CloudMD, a company mentioned in this article.

Keith Schaefer Disclosures:

Charts provided by the author.

Stricter management of fisheries is needed to prevent overexploitation and decline of tuna and their mackerel relatives, according to an international study. The researchers say fisheries managers have wrongly treated upper limits for catches as target levels for fishing, contributing to global declines and the threatened status of some species.

The number of overexploited or collapsed fish stocks in the Mediterranean Sea has been increasing at a rate of approximately 38 every 10 years between 1970 and 2010, a new study has shown. In the Black Sea, the equivalent figure is 13 stocks per decade, the researchers found. The study’s authors augmented traditional methods of stock assessments with a variety of other data sources on multiple fish species to give a more accurate overview of these marine ecosystems. These results should be used to improve conservation and management, they recommend.

Fish farming in the Mediterranean has increasingly shifted from producing fish such as grey mullet, which are herbivores near the bottom of the food chain, to species such as sea bass, which are predators. This ‘farming up’ the food chain requires wild fish to be caught to provide feed. A return to farming fish lower in the food chain would use marine resources more efficiently, a new study says.

Reducing meat and dairy consumption would help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farming. A recent study describes the "ecological leftovers" approach to reducing livestock-related GHGs, which assumes that a sustainable number of livestock can be calculated on the basis of available marginal land, unsuitable for other purposes, and available agricultural by-products, which could be used as feed.

A new combination of three models has explored the future dynamics of European livestock distribution. The results indicate that, without environmental policy, livestock density will increase both inside and outside current livestock hotspots. This will also occur to a certain degree with regulation, but the risk of negative impacts will be less likely.

Storage of carbon in soil helps to keep land fertile and regulates the climate, and is therefore an important ecosystem service. However, mapping of soil carbon stocks currently uses unreliable measures. This study used data from a national survey of English grasslands to show that soil carbon stocks can be accurately predicted using simple measures of soil and climatic conditions.

Several barriers to upgrading existing social housing with innovative energy systems (IES) have been identified by a study of eight large-scale renovation projects in the Netherlands. These include a lack of trust between stakeholders, opposition from tenants on grounds of increased costs or delays, or poor experience with previous energy projects.

In-depth soil information is increasingly required to achieve an array of environmental and economic goals. In particular, accurate estimates of soil carbon stocks are necessary to guide land-management practices and climate- related policymaking. To help meet this need, Australian scientists have developed a new sensing method to analyse cylindrical soil samples (soil cores), known as the Soil Condition ANalysis System (SCANS). By integrating a novel automated soil- core sensing system (CSS) with advanced statistical analytics and modelling, the SCANS provides a level of detail that is difficult to achieve with existing alternatives. SCANS is not only rapid, accurate and inexpensive1, but is likely to be a useful tool for farmers, land managers and policymakers, as the improved assessment of soil functions, structures and carbon stocks will facilitate more informed, sustainable decision-making.

A new study highlights the economic importance of coastal and marine areas and the urgent need to develop concrete methods for assessing their value. Researchers say the need is especially strong now as climate change's impacts could reduce the economic value of coastal and marine environments.

In economic terms, overfishing can be regarded as borrowing natural capital at a high rate of interest, according to a new study. Combining economic and biological principles, the study develops a concept that expresses overfishing in terms of the ‘interest’ that the fishing industry have to repay in future years as a result of lost income from depleted fish stocks.

The livestock sector is estimated to contribute 14.5% of all global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study estimated the costs of reducing emissions from ruminant livestock using five different practices. The findings will help policymakers to understand the cost effectiveness of different interventions in the sector, and the contribution that different policies could make to addressing climate change.

As part of the EU’s Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Waters1, a new study from the Joint Research Centre has mapped the water requirements of livestock across Europe for 2005. The maps and data can help quantify total European water use but also inform sustainable management by making use of ecosystem services (ESSs).

Soil erosion in Italy could be reduced by 43% if Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) were fully adopted, a recent study has found. Reducing soil erosion would also increase soil organic carbon stocks, particularly on cultivated sloping land.

The European anchovy is one of the most important small pelagic fish in the Adriatic Sea, but the size of the stock can fluctuate year on year. This study aimed to investigate the link between anchovy catch and winter circulation patterns in the North Adriatic sea. The findings show that oceanographic conditions during winter determine anchovy abundance. Prediction of these conditions could help to guide sustainable fisheries management in the region.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) in which fishing is prohibited contain substantially more fish, including commercially valuable species, than either partially protected or unenforced MPAs, according to a recent survey of rocky reef fish in the Mediterranean Sea. This suggests that MPAs need to be highly protected to offer the best chance of recovery for fish stocks, say the researchers.

The growing human population and a shift to more resource-intensive habits and behaviours are increasing the demands on global ecosystems. Natural capital is a way to describe Earth’s natural assets, including soil, air, water, and living things, existing as complex ecosystems, which provide a range of services to humans. Depleting and degrading these reserves may irreversibly reduce the availability of benefits to future generations. This In-Depth Report presents an overview of ideas, debates and progress so far in natural capital accounting, in particular in accounting for ecosystems and their services.

Vermicomposting livestock manure with maize can increase agricultural benefit by 304%, shows a new study. The combination of increased crop yield and the additional earthworms produced as a result of the process led to a substantial increase in output compared to a traditional composting system.

A common anti-parasitic drug used to control gastrointestinal worms in livestock has been shown to inhibit seed germination of three common grassland species. This recent study is the first to show that anthelmintics may negatively affect plant regeneration. The researchers say that treatments should be carefully timed in order to avoid the strongest impact of the drugs on germination and the consequential negative affect on grassland regeneration.

Growing demand for biorenewable chemicals could lead to conflicts with food production and unwanted environmental impacts. Against this context, this study investigated different types of feedstock and conversion technologies. The authors recommend use of only non-edible feedstock alongside green and carbon neutral conversion technologies, such as algal fermentation.

THE small pool of houses for sale in Greater Hobart is getting smaller.

The post Beefed up livestock industry meets rising demand appeared first on The Lead SA.

The margin of victory was perhaps closer than it should have been but Leverstock Green A held their nerve in the final over to beat Watford Town A by five runs and win the Watford Observer Fourteen14 Plate last night.

Investigators find unhealthy and dead animals on 24 farms near natural gas drilling sites. The resulting paper is the first peer-reviewed study linking fracking

With the right rebates, solar panels can offer a return on investment far higher than you'll find in the S&P 500.

Facebook RSUs, billionaires' favorite stocks, the weak earnings predictions and more.

For my final last minute-ish holiday stocking stuffer pick, a bamboo charcoal- and goat milk-based skincare bar from the Fabulous Beekman Boys.