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As body cameras gain more attention, their uses are expanding well beyond law enforcement: Seattle Times
Weeks of protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd have placed renewed attention on police body-worn cameras, whose two largest U.S. manufacturers have a significant Seattle presence.
Axon and Motorola Solutions recently branched out to commercial sales even before Floyd’s filmed killing in Minneapolis. Cellphone footage from bystanders put the case in the spotlight, but recordings from police body cameras are expected to be introduced at trial.
Businesses and municipal services large and small — including fire departments, emergency medical technicians, private security firms, department stores and construction crews — have turned increasingly to body-worn devices from a plethora of manufacturers to monitor employees for training, safety and behavioral purposes.
“Frankly, we’ve been really surprised at the level of interest in a broad number of different industry marketplaces that were not on our radar before,’’ said Axon founder Rick Smith, whose 1,500 employees include 245 in a Seattle office that is the company’s second biggest beyond its Scottsdale, Arizona, headquarters.
The idea of body cameras as a nonlethal safety tool to monitor police and modify behavior — with the aim of reducing excessive force by officers and false complaints against them — is also what’s luring the business world.
Axon makes body cameras for the Seattle Police Department and the Minneapolis force, four of whom were charged in Floyd’s killing in May. Within the past six months, it has started selling cameras to larger companies for “industrial use” purposes, one of the bigger ones a pharmaceutical firm where devices are being worn on a trial basis by employees at drug-testing facilities.
“It turns out that any time there is any concern that somebody didn’t follow the right safety protocols, they have to scrap millions of dollars of medication,” Smith said. “But they reported back to us that by having people that are working key processes wear body cameras, they are able to go back and check and verify whether or not a process was followed. They’ve already saved millions of dollars in stuff they didn’t have to scrap.”
Others include a company doing “large truckloads of deliveries” to grocery stores, using cameras to record the physical transfer of goods to reduce theft and loss. “There are times when a client would call up and say, ‘Hey, we’re one palette short of some produce’ or ‘This produce is bad.’ Well, now that they’ve got the video, they’re able to go back and look.”
While cameras like GoPro have made significant inroads among consumers — sky divers, mountain climbers, cyclists and other outdoor enthusiasts — Smith said his commercial clients want something different. The Axon Flex 2, Axon Body 2 and newer Body 3 cameras are less focused on color pixelation and cinematography than a GoPro, but better for evidence gathering given their 12-hour, full-police-shift battery life and delivery of accurate, non-erasable footage — even in low light — and crisp audio along with secure storage options.
The Body 3 also offers livestreaming that activates automatically when a police weapon is drawn or emergency lights activated, and remote map-tracking of the camera-wearer.
“The fact that we do this with police evidence is a strong industry endorsement around the reliability and security of our overall platform,” Smith said. “It appears to really be resonating in a lot of other industries.”
Motorola has made in-vehicle cameras for police since 2004 — becoming the national leader in that realm — before branching out to body camera sales in 2015. It began selling body cameras commercially in the United Kingdom last year and in the United States the first half of this year to customers in retail sales, the railway industry and emergency first responders.
The company’s Seattle office of about 150 employees is a headquarters for its “command center software” business — which includes tools for gathering and storing video evidence obtained from body cameras.
John Kedzierski, Motorola’s senior vice president of video evidence and analytics, said the recent protests and calls for increased body camera use by police “has absolutely made more customers interested” in the product. But Kedzierski said commercial interest had already been piqued, with demand surging once the coronavirus pandemic took hold.
“Unfortunately, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to see cases where customers behave very inappropriately,” Kedzierski said. “You’ve probably read and heard about cases where people engage in coughing and spitting intentionally because they were dissatisfied with something. And so, we’re seeing more demand for cameras in those areas to de-escalate those situations and, if need be, to document them.”
Clients also use the footage to train new employees on real-life situations they may face. Or, to go over how an employee handled a situation to train them to attain better outcomes.
Motorola, like Axon, wouldn’t divulge the names of its U.S. clients because it doesn’t have permission. Motorola clients overseas include the Sainsbury’s department store chain — the U.K.’s second largest — where Kedzierski said employees at about 400 of 1,400 or so locations wear the company’s VT100 camera to record customer interactions.
“Front-line employees that are trying to enforce people wearing masks, or social distancing, inside the store can encounter a customer that doesn’t want to do that,” said Kedzierski, whose company also sells VT100 cameras to the British-based ASDA and Co-op supermarket chains. “And those situations can get escalated. That focus on employee safety has been a key driver in our discussions more than anything else.”
Thanks!
NW2: i don’t mean to be dense, but As one of your followers, I sure appreciate it when u add your arrows to indicate your read of the chart. Helps me confirm whether I’m reading it the way u are.
I've read two interesting theories about the sell-off today.
On Reddit a commentator complained about the sudden rebalancing of the ETF on Friday afternoon just before closing as it rapidly increased its holdings in MEDIF, thereby artificially and temporarily inflating the SP. By this logic Friday's price was unreasonable and today's is reasonable and we should hold here.
In contrast, on the Yahoo board, a commentator suspects some manipulation because 1,851,700 stock options were granted to directors, employees and suppliers-etc.. He claims the exercise price is the close of business 8/13/2019. It is in the best interest of these option holders to have a discounted stock price today, so the price fell. By this logic we should rebound tomorrow.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/marijuana-cannabis-edibles-extracts-vaping-1.5174844
Cannabis edibles to be legally for sale by mid-December
New cannabis products — like edibles, beverages, topicals and extracts — will be legally for sale in Canada mid-December.
Regulations will come into effect on October 17th, with the products to be available two months later, Radio-Canada has learned.
The final regulations will be rolled out today by Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair, the minister responsible for administering the Cannabis Act.
It's expected that a limited selection of products will appear gradually in physical or online stores. Federal licence holders must provide 60 days notice to Health Canada of their plan to sell the products, and distributors and retailers authorized by provinces or territories will need time to purchase and obtain the new products and make them available for sale.
When dried cannabis became legal for recreational use last October, the federal government continued its consultations on rules for edibles and other products. Those consultations ended in February. Ottawa indicated at the time that regulations on cannabis edibles and concentrates would come into effect on Oct. 17, 2019.
The new regulations will give authorized distributors and retailers access to three new classes of cannabis products: edibles (candy, baked goods), cannabis extracts and cannabis 'topicals' (ointments, oils, makeup).
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4266330-need-know-cronos-medipharm-deal
What You Need To Know About The Cronos-MediPharm Deal
Summary
CRON and MEDIF announced a new deal in May.
The stocks of both CRON and MEDIF rallied on the news.
The agreement is however, only really positive for MEDIF.
A recently announced deal between MediPharm Labs Corp. (OTCQX:MEDIF) and Cronos Group (CRON) produced upside in the stock of both companies. For MEDIF, the deal is indeed a development that supports the bull case. For CRON, it is a little harder to argue this deal is bullish.
A tale of two agreements
The May 14, 2019, press release from CRON and MEDIF provides details on two agreements. The first agreement is the "Bulk Resin Supply Agreement" which sees CRON subsidiary, Peace Naturals Project Inc., purchasing a minimum of ~C$30M of cannabis concentrate from MEDIF subsidiary, MediPharm Labs Inc., over 18 months.
We can see straight away that this deal is a positive development for MEDIF. MEDIF has secured C$30M in revenues over 18 months, and the deal includes the option for Peace Naturals to purchase up to ~C$18M more during that 18 months, and ~C$12M more during a six-month extension period. All in, the Bulk Resin Supply Agreement might see MEDIF bring in ~C$60M from CRON by April 2021.
MEDIF continues to perform
With Q1'19 earnings, MEDIF reported C$22M in revenue from contracts with customers, representing a 115% increase over the prior quarter. While MEDIF is low on cash, its cash and equivalents grew from C$7.9M at the end of Q4'18, to C$8.4M at the end of Q1'19.
MEDIF's revenues may continue to grow as the company seems to continue to set up new revenue-generating agreements. MEDIF's Q1'19 MD&A notes the company had signed five tolling agreements with three-year terms, and this was prior to the CRON-MEDIF deal. Other details of MEDIF's agreements worthy of note include an agreement set up in Q4'18 with Canopy Growth Corporation (OTC:CGC). MEDIF will supply up to 900 kg of cannabis extract to CGC and its subsidiaries, with 450 kg set as the minimum purchase. On top of deals with Canadian players like CGC and CRON, MEDIF also entered its first international export agreement in Q1'19 which will see the company supply oils/resin to AusCann Group Holdings Ltd.
Summary
While the CRON-MEDIF deal was met with a rally in the stock of both companies, the agreement is far more bullish for MEDIF than it is for CRON. CRON working towards a capacity of 117,150 kg, but still buying cannabis products from other companies is not really a positive. Supplying MEDIF with cannabis for processing under the Tolling Agreement is understandable if CRON feels MEDIF is the right contractor for the job, despite their own extraction operations, but again, that isn't bullish. In my opinion, it appears that CRON is a little behind schedule, it wasn't ready for the launch of recreational cannabis to the same extent as other players and now it isn't ready for the demand it anticipates with regards to resins/oils.
https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/23/little-known-cannabis-stock-outperforms-canopy-growth-tsxweed/
Recently listed cannabis stock MediPharm Labs Corp (TSXV:LABS) is trending for all the right reasons in May after the company has achieved in two consecutive quarters what its big brothers in the industry could only dream of since inception.
The company reported its second adjusted operating earnings quarter on May 10 covering the three months ended March 31, 2019.
MediPharm received its initial sales license in November last year and went on to report a positive adjusted EBITDA from $10 million in revenues in two months. It has done so again for the second time on $22 million sales in its first full quarter of sales, beating several well-known industry giants like Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED) to operating profitability.
Who is MediPharm Labs?
Who is MediPharm Labs?
Listed on October 4, the young firm was the first marijuana player to be licensed by Health Canada without a production facility as its business strategy is reliant on value addition, and not primary agricultural production.
The company specialises in producing and selling cannabis extracts on a wholesale basis from dried marijuana procured from various licensed producers (about 15 of them so far) and management has introduced tolling services to Canadian licensed producers (LPs) for oils, formulations and derivatives production.
The company has also entered into supply agreements for oils and capsules with four Canadian provincial authorities as it prepares to make direct sales into national distribution channels.
Record earnings performance
The company’s top line increased by a massive 115% sequentially as it reported its first full quarter of sales, and there wasn’t a single acquisition made to bolster sales growth.
Even more impressive is the fact that both quarters were actually profitable on a normalised Adjusted EBITDA basis, one of the most reliable cash based operating profitability measures that removes the impact of share based compensation and somewhat arbitrary amortisation charges to reflect the earning power in a company’s business model.
Although the gross margin was lower at 31% as compared to 39% in a previous quarter due to lower average selling prices (the opportunistic price increase during industry product shortages last year were not repeatable) the company maintained a positive 20% Adjusted EBITDA margin and grew the adjusted operating earnings by 102% sequentially.
Most noteworthy, the company recorded positive operating cash flows for the quarter, something most industry peers can only dream of.
…and the stock is responding so well
Marijuana investors love growth, but they reward profitability even more. MediPharm’s stock has grown by over 300% so far this year, trumping Canopy Growth by a very wide margin.
Thanks!
Peeps on Twitter talking about VFF entering extraction market and disrupting business for other extractors due to their existing relationships with grocery chains and big box retailers.
Was it announced somewhere that we are adding extraction capacity in Q4?
Exactly. Stay cool and, for me, buy value and invest in quality like VFF. I’ve made $ on junk but I sleep a lot better with my $ here. Profitability, management, experience—it all matters in the long game and Cannabis/hemp is the « big long »as Danny Moses says.
Exactly. They don’t care if they were right; all they care about is making it work and it did: SP fell $7.00 and shorty made bank.
I am sad for the Longs who did their DD, invested in a good company, and then got shaken out for losses.
I’m still green here but I know what it’s like to look at the red ink everyday and to be tempted to sell just to make it go away. May be emotional trading but it happens.
CBD STOCK CV Sciences Inc (OTCMKTS: CVSI) Is The Best Bet Among CBD Stocks
(My apologies if this has already been posted).
MJ GLOBAL REPORT
CV Sciences Inc (OTCMKTS: CVSI) is one of the best known CBD stocks trading on the OTC Markets. The company makes a popular form of chewing gum and its CBD oil is currently the highest-quality top-selling brand, with an excellent reputation for product safety and efficiency.
So far this year, this popularity has not translated into a top-performing stock. For most of 2019, CVSI has been range-bound, whereas in 2018 we saw the stock run from $1 to $9 in just 4 months. Investors are now asking if we are going to see another explosive move this summer?
CVSI Background
First up, here’s a little background info for those of you that aren’t familiar with CVSI. CV Sciences, Inc. operates two distinct business segments: a consumer product division focused on manufacturing, marketing and selling plant-based CBD products to a range of market sectors; and a drug development division focused on developing and commercializing novel therapeutics utilizing CBD. The Company’s PlusCBD Oil™ is the top-selling brand of hemp-derived CBD on the market, according to SPINS, the leading provider of syndicated data and insights for the natural, organic and specialty products industry. CV Sciences, Inc. has primary offices and facilities in San Diego, California and Las Vegas, Nevada.
Deloitte & Touche LLP As Auditor
The big expectation we have here at MJ Global Report is that CVSI is going to uplist to NASDAQ. This is why the company has hired the big accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the Company’s new independent registered public accounting firm. Having a prestigious accounting firm as your auditor helps when it comes to NASDAQ listing. We believe it’s not if, but when CVSI will be trading on the NASDAQ.
Earnings Next Week
The next big catalyst for the stock will be when CV Sciences reports its first quarter of 2019 ended March 31, 2019, after the stock market closes on Wednesday, May 8, 2019. The Company will also hold a conference call with the investment community at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time (4:30 p.m. Eastern Time) that same day.
Bottom Line
Currently trading with a market cap of $500 million, CVSI is one of the most exciting stories among CBD stocks. With what many consider the best CBD oil in the business and growing demand for all things CBD, we believe CVSI is one of the best long-term plays for investors looking for exposure to the CBD space. We expect the stock to breakout higher much sooner than later.
For the latest updates on CVSI and other CBD stocks, sign up below!
Disclosure: We have no position in CVSI and have not been compensated for this article.
https://mjglobalreport.com/cv-sciences-inc-otcmkts-cvsi-best-bet-cbd-stocks/
Come on you tightwads—sell me some 4s so I can top off the tank!
Bank of America analyst Christopher Carey initiated coverage of ACB; bullish on ACB and CGC
Aurora Cannabis, Inc. ACB 0.9%, Buy rating, C$15 target (US $11).
Canopy Growth Corp CGC 2.78%, Buy rating, C$70 target ($52).
Carey is also bullish on Canopy Growth and Aurora. He said Canopy’s 6 million square feet of production capacity and its partnership with alcoholic beverage leader Constellation Brands, Inc. STZ 0.8% have it well-positioned to be a long-term market leader. Carey said Aurora is one of the few cannabis companies setting up a global operation, and it has yet to announce a major partnership, leaving open the possibility of a major bullish catalyst.
https://etfdailynews.com/2019/04/17/bank-of-america-initiates-coverage-on-4-marijuana-stocks/
Very likely, though I’m in Whistler and white Rock more frequently! I’ve been wanting to get up to Tofino again, too.
Is there anyway around the hefty foreign fee for US investors? I can see Canada from my house but I Fidelity wants $50 per trade!
Today was amazing; to go green the day after a Citron attack: wow! Buyers (and I also added) didn’t seem to blink.
Thanks!
Anyone have thoughts on where CWEB will pull back? I'm much better at buying than selling.
Correction: plusCBD oil is sold in the pharmacy of my neighborhood grocery store which is owned by Albertsons not Kroger.
I'm at my local Kroger store in Wa right now (waiting for my meds at the pharmacy) and there's a big sign advertising Plus CBD oil at checkout. We are already in this chain-at least here in Wa.
Whoa--I came back to my desk to find that my 2.30 stink bid filled AND that we closed up a penny. Figured it would be one or the other.
Taco! Current after hours bid is $9.60.
Whoa--already up in after hours trading
Wow--I'm equal parts "pisd" at big pharma and happy to be investing here. Thx for posting the link
ITHUF as i am in US; I suppose we will lose the "f" for foreign when we eventually uplist, as occurred w my Village shares. I'll want more shares b4 that happens!
I received my ITHUF shares; I'm guessing this explains today's dip as these shares are no longer locked up for people.
MPXEF shares converted to Ianthus today; should we expect a dip nicely timed before earnings?
Got my shares USAA.
Got my Ianthus shares just now! Looks like some folks are unloading a few.
Yes, frustrating.
On the other hand, these shares are now worth more than $1.00 USD! (ITHUF @ $5.90/6 = .98 + our MPXI).
Every time they open a new dispensary we get another pop.
Frustrate me some more!
Whoa--so glad I caught the Village bus last month. TY Mono et. al. !
Divide your 1500 shares by 6, multiply by current price of Ianthus. Then add a bit more for your 150 MPXI shares.
Relax, too: Ianthus is still rising, which means your conversion is getting better every day.
We are now trading at a premium to Ianthus. (.92 x 6 = $5.50). Maybe not if u factor in MPXI, however. It closed at .94 CDN; but who knows where it will settle? It's a bit like an IPO only Canadians can buy at the moment.
Everyone gets the MPX intl.; I suppose the shares will be on theOTC ; maybe that's the delay on the U S side.
Yup; I just topped off my tank of MPX; so still trading here.
Think we will see our new Ian and MPX intl shares mañana?
Grew up 1 ferry from Seattle! Now live north of the city.
Sh--t MONO says:
"At 30% gains you take 20% off; at 50-100 % gains take 30-50% off. From there you are managing your profit. You'll think more clearly and make better decisions."
I thought this advice would be easy to follow but I'm finding the sell button hard to hit with these daily gains; i guess that's the "thinking clearly" part.