The MissionIR Report - April 2014
In-depth analysis, timely updates, latest market news
 |
|
|
Market News |
Company Updates |
 |
|
U.S. Stocks Hold Steady Near Record Amid Payrolls DataU.S. stocks maintained near all-time highs, hardly moving, as investors weighed data showing companies added to payrolls last month and comments from Federal Reserve officials. Intuitive Surgical Inc. rose 3.7 percent after JMP Securities LLC upgraded the stock’s rating. MannKind Corp. jumped 76 percent after its inhaled treatment for diabetes won the recommendation of a U.S. advisory panel. Apollo Education Group Inc. slipped 8.3 percent after it received a subpoena from the Education Department for marketing and recruitment records. “You’re seeing a bit of fatigue in general,” Matt Lloyd, the chief investment strategist at Advisors Asset Management Inc. in Monument, Colorado, said in a telephone interview. His firm oversees $14.2 billion. “What you get there is a choppy market with nothing overly done on both sides. We still have a trajectory higher and positive growth. But on the whole in the economy, it’s two steps forward and one step back.” The S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent yesterday to cap a third day of gains, the longest streak since February, as consumer and technology stocks pushed the gauge to a record and an index of manufacturing boosted optimism the economy withstood severe winter weather. Equity Valuation The equities benchmark trades at 17.4 times reported earnings, the highest level since 2010 and 11 percent above its five-year average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Data reported yesterday showed February factory goods orders rose 1.6 percent, topping an estimated advance of 1.2 percent. A separate report indicated companies in the U.S. boosted payrolls by 191,000 in March, according to figures from the ADP Research Institute in Roseland, New Jersey. The median forecast of 38 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 195,000 advance. The government’s monthly jobs report for March is due April 4. Reports from hiring to factory output had shown weakness this year as freezing temperatures and mountains of snow kept shoppers indoors, grounded flights and made it harder for shippers to fill product orders. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said last week that “considerable slack” in the labor market is evidence that the central bank’s unprecedented accommodation will be needed for “some time” to put Americans back to work. Fed Comments Investors also watched comments from Fed officials today to gauge the timing and pace of further cuts to stimulus. Fed Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in a Bloomberg Radio interview that a further slowing of inflation could prompt policy makers to suspend tapering of bond purchases, though he doesn’t expect that to happen. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said in a separate speech that he supports a “continued phase-out” of bond purchases. The central bank has cut $10 billion from its monthly bond buying in each of its past three meetings, leaving the total at $55 billion. The Fed stimulus has helped propel the S&P 500 higher by as much as 179 percent from its bear-market low in March 2009. The equity gauge climbed 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2014, its fifth consecutive quarterly advance. Sweet Spot “Growth appears not too strong to feed the Fed’s hawks but neither too slow to question the recovery, re-emphasizing the sweet-spot concept -- which should be the most favorable environment for risky assets in 2014,” Witold Bahrke, who helps oversee $55 billion as a senior strategist at PFA Asset Management in Copenhagen, wrote in an e-mail. Investors have removed $3.7 billion from U.S. equity exchange-traded funds in the past five days and added $1.3 billion to bond ETFs, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Financial stocks saw the most money removed among industry ETFs, losing $489.2 million during the past week. Yellen Jobs Dashboard Shows Rate Rise Far on HorizonMore than two-thirds of the gauges on Janet Yellen’s labor-market dashboard are still showing worse readings than before the recession, reinforcing her belief that the economy will need “extraordinary support” from the Federal Reserve for “some time to come.” Only two of the nine indicators flagged by the new Fed chair -- payroll growth and layoffs -- are back to where they were in the four years leading up to the last economic downturn. The seven others, including joblessness, underemployment and labor-force participation, have yet to return to their 2004-to-2007 averages. “The unemployment rate and a lot of these other series aren’t where the Fed thinks they need to be,” said Joe LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York and the top forecaster of unemployment over the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Policy makers are “going to need a general sense that the labor market has entered a more sustainable path before they start to consider the possibility of raising interest rates.” Yellen is using what she calls her “dashboard” of jobs data to justify the Fed’s easy-money policies and to argue that there’s still considerable slack in the labor market almost five years after the recession’s end. While the job market has strengthened considerably from the depths of the downturn, it is “not back to normal health,” the Fed chief said in a March 31 speech in Chicago. Main Laggards The biggest laggards have been long-term unemployment and participation. More than a third of the jobless have been out of work for more than 26 weeks, while the share of the working-age population in the labor force is at an almost 36-year low. “The indicators are mixed,” said Roberto Perli, a partner at Cornerstone Macro LP in Washington and a former central bank economist. “That allows the Fed to stay the course” and keep interest rates low. Yellen’s console of statistics has pluses and minuses. While it provides a broader picture of the labor market than focusing on the unemployment rate alone, it can confuse investors about the Fed’s intentions because it introduces additional variables without making clear how much weight the central bank is giving to each statistic. “The market is more vulnerable to surprise in some of these other labor-market data,” LaVorgna said. Some economists, including Michelle Girard of RBS Securities in Stamford, Connecticut, also worry that the instrument panel overestimates the amount of slack in the labor market and includes gauges that aren’t susceptible to changes in Fed policy. The Fed is projected to begin raising interest rates in the third quarter of next year, according to the median estimate of 65 economists in a Bloomberg survey conducted March 7-12. Obama Says 7.1 Million Health Sign-Ups Rebut CriticismPresident Barack Obama’s declaration that over 7 million health-plan enrollments serve as a rebuke to critics of his signature law won’t diminish the opposition nor stop the scrutiny of the overhaul’s effect. “The Affordable Care Act hasn’t completely fixed our long-broken health-care system, but this law has made our health-care system a lot better,” Obama told administration officials, lawmakers and other supporters in the White House Rose Garden. “The debate over repealing this law is over.” The enrollment figure is a symbolic achievement for the president, matching initial estimates by the Congressional Budget Office that his administration adopted as a goal before new insurance exchanges opened Oct. 1. In February, after the marketplaces experienced widespread computer errors, preventing many people from signing up until December, the CBO scaled back its estimate to 6 million. That number was reached by March 27. The total announced by Obama doesn’t reflect all enrollment from 14 separate state exchanges on the final day or people who started the process and weren’t able to finish because of technical difficulties. Republicans said the figure lacks credibility because it doesn’t account for people who never pay their first premium to their insurers, the final step required to enroll. While the law sought to provide health-care coverage to the uninsured, it’s not clear how many people who enrolled through the exchanges already had a health plan. “These numbers are a total fantasy -- they’re arbitrary and fictitious,” Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican, said in a statement yesterday that was typical of the reaction from his party. Obama said that Republicans have criticized the law “without offering any plausible alternative.” Since 2011, the House of Representatives under Republican control has voted 55 times to repeal parts or all of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and has never passed legislation to comparably expand U.S. health insurance coverage. |
Methes Energies International Ltd. (MEIL)Renewable energy company Methes Energies offers a wide range of products and services to biodiesel fuel producers. The company recently received a deposit from Antilla Energy VBA to start the manufacturing process of one Denami 600 Biodiesel Processor to be delivered to Aruba in September 2014. Antilla intends to use the Denami 600 to convert waste cooking oil into produce biodiesel that will then be blended with diesel fuel and distributed to clients across the island. Antilla’s plan is to grow its facility to about 6 million gallons per year, anticipating adding four more Denami 600s as part of its broader goal to help Aruba reach its “Green Aruba 2020” targets. Nicholas Ng, President of Methes Energies, said he expects this order to be the first of many more manufacturing orders. “We have been working with several clients that are, just like Antilla, at a point where they now need to order their Denami. It is a sometime a long process but at the end it is very rewarding for our clients and our company," he said in a news release. About Methes Energies International Ltd. Methes Energies uses its own proprietary technology to produce high-quality biodiesel processors and systems to capitalize on the growing demand for renewable energy, surging energy prices, and the value of biodiesel as a practical and realistic long-term replacement for conventional diesel fuel. The Company’s processors are flexible and can use a variety of virgin vegetable oils, used vegetable oil and rendered animal fat feedstock, allowing operators to take advantage of feedstock buying opportunities. Methes Energies also markets and sells high-quality biodiesel fuel produced at its 1.3 MGY (5 MLY) showcase production facility in Mississauga, Ontario, and at it’s 13 MGY (50 MLY) facility in Sombra, Ontario, to customers in the U.S. and Canada. Methes Energies’ broad range of expertise and solutions include all aspects of the engineering, manufacturing, production, logistic, marketing and distribution processes. Among other services, the company leverages its cutting-edge biodiesel processors, pre-treatment systems, and other solutions to address real and specific biodiesel production challenges for large and small-scale biodiesel producers and entrepreneurs seeking to produce their own fuel. In 2007 the company introduced the Denami 600, the industry’s first compact, full automated continuous flow biodiesel processor designed to run on a wide variety of feed stocks. This reliable, cost-effective and superior method of producing top-grade biodiesel exceeds current ASTM standards. The company also sells feedstock to its network of biodiesel producers, selling their biodiesel production and providing clients with proprietary software to operate and control their processors. Methes Energies remotely monitors the quality and characteristics of its clients' production, upgrades and repairs their processors as necessary, and advises clients on adjusting their processes to use varying feedstock to improve the quality of their biodiesel. As a competitive and highly respected revenue-generating player in the North American biodiesel sector, Methes Energies is fast building a network of biodiesel operators and facilities to capitalize on buying power and economies of scale. The North American demand for biodiesel is sizeable and the company is well positioned for global expansion throughout Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. VistaGen Therapeutics, Inc.
|
 |
Home Blog About Us IR Services Investors Partners Market Research Contact Disclaimer
© 2014 Mission Investor Relations. All rights reserved.
3645 Marketplace Blvd. Suite 130-280 Atlanta, GA 30344 404-941-8975