Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Refer to my recent post RE Calif grid #29545
EV charging price check in SF area - just amazed at the pricing and implied gross margins. Low cost charging can be had via PowerFlex at ~20 cents/kw typically at public facilities like school parking lots on weekends. However, more typical regular hour charging being priced at ~40-60 cents/kw at shopping areas and people are using them (1 empty charger out of 20 at 3:30PM at 56 cents/kw) for convenience while shopping. For reference, I topped off 15kw for $6.45 for 27 miles of range the other day at public school. The equivalent gasoline cost for those added miles would have been ~$4. The cost of that EV charge (assuming 60% renewables and 40% NG) including transmission ~ $1. There is no way for H2 to ever be adopted or for O&G downstream to compete with those current margins.
NKGN - PR about what was mentioned in HC Wainwright presentation regarding starting Ph 2 clinical trial and 3 month interim results for first 3 patients.
https://nkgenbiotech.com/nkgen-biotechs-positive-phase-1-clinical-data-in-moderate-alzheimers-disease-advances-troculeucel-into-phase-2-with-first-patient-dosed-in-phase-1-2a-trial/
AD therapy - using autologous NK cells. Intriguing results but I wonder how it can be commercially scaled up since it is autologous. Below is the replay from HC Wainwright conference from last Monday.
https://journey.ct.events/view/fe1b7363-0853-41ec-be6a-17e0e81f8ff2
MSFT/PLTR/GOOG in that order at Samsung for online customer service AI. They ran a in-house 3 way shoot out for customer assistance AI platform under "Rubicon Project".. If results hold up after initial release, it will be introduced globally next spring.
https://www.etnews.com/20240902000267
Definitely but I would rate the shift of MSFT AI R&D as being more significant than whatever IBM was doing in China.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/16/microsoft-offers-relocation-to-hundreds-of-china-based-ai-staff-.html
Just have to wary of the nut jobs that want to pipe or store H2 in existing gas infrastructure in your neighborhood.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-08-12/the-dirty-secret-behind-the-green-hydrogen-push
CA is at 61% renewables for the grid this summer, which has had longer than usual heat waves. I get flex alerts texts for evening times on occasion but have had no black/brown outs compared to recent years. There will come a time when ICE drivers will be hunting for gas stations like EV drivers are hunting for EV charging stalls.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/18/a-gamechanger-how-giant-batteries-are-making-californias-power-grid-stronger-and-reducing-the-risk-of-blackouts-during-heat-waves
.
Western refiners association doesn't have anything on this. Is there a link? Current situation is a joke really, the coincidental seasonal shut downs to change blends are suspiciously coordinated amongst the biggest refineries. This may be intentional (or not ) but I am sure the margins are attractive during those several weeks. They should just do time allocated slots for blend changing for the biggest refineries so output is not disrupted going from summer to winter and vice versa.
Probably not a breakthru I would want to be in close proximity to after a few years of operating life.
Tengiz was at discovery, way over pressured (aka undersaturated) and also way above miscibility pressure. Anything above miscibility pressure is just wasted energy, Capex and Opex. IDK if there exist any geomechanical risks to lowering the pressure ( by a lot, >5000 psi if recollection serves), that would only be the consideration in not doing it ASAP.
PLTR - Q2 slides. AIP/Foundry increased commercial adoption from AIP "bootcamps" impacting growth rate after starting early last year. Commercial revenue will exceed .gov revenues by year end. Slide 12 talks about Maven platform for DoD.
https://investors.palantir.com/files/Palantir%20Q2%202024%20Business%20Update.pdf
IEA is also bad at forecasting the penetration of renewables. Just go back through the last decade and see them revise up penetration yearly. Legacy combustion cycle generated energy is now higher cost than solar panel generated energy. Plus thermodynamics rules as you wrote and that heavily favors generating electrons and using that in electric motors. The friction to penetration continues to be lack of infrastructure to deliver electrons but will be addressed given the steep cost gradient in favor of renewables now. Economics rule and in Saudi Arabia, they are switching to solar ASAP so they can export more oil and gas. Saudi's aren't dumb, if economics favor combustion, they would just burn oil and gas.
Couple of thousand for the type of patients that MDACC treated. Ironic in what the LuminIce drop outs for cohort 1 and 2 show is that patients and docs don't what to fool around with failing everything before going to AFM13 after failing chemo and CPI. So that implies a bigger market. Still to begin is the cd30+ PTCL cohort, that's the bigger market. Salvage cHL market is small but enough to get the company to self funding.
The FDA really wants the sickest patients that has are at the end of their ropes to be consistent with what MDACC did in AFM13-104 trial.
ie
1. fail chemo-checkpt
2. fail BV (Adcetris)
3. fail SCT if they got to that stage.
4. and no-ongoing infections
MDACC median prior lines were 7! I can't imagine that many lines of treatment for cancer. These folks have been through the a lot. And some of them dropped out because they can't withstand the commute to cancer center.
AFMD +20% on Q1 update. Have to listen to CC to get details on LuminIce drop outs - kinda hilarious but also sad that patients/docs are trying to hide treatment/infections history to get into the trial. Only to be rejected after more thorough background review and slowing down the enrollment process for everyone involved (something to do with re-slotting once someone drops out for whatever reason). 2 of these patients are now trying Acetris first and when/if PD on Acetris if they want to re-enroll in trial. AFM28 mono getting 33% CR at highest P1 dose is also interesting since r/r AML patients have low NK cell counts.
IMO EV is low for the pipeline with AA probably in the cards for LuminIce, and now with nsclc egfrMut and r/r AML also.
https://www.affimed.com/affimed-reports-first-quarter-2024-financial-results-business-update/
sfmd - q1 update scheduled for 6/12 pre-market. IMO they provide update on afm13-203 run in NK doses and folks will be interested in whether they can repeat the success of MDACC's afm13-104 and the more involved cbNK cell processing used by MDACC.
https://www.affimed.com/affimed-announces-oral-presentation-of-phase-1-2-data-from-afm13-in-combination-with-allogeneic-nk-cells-at-the-2023-ash-annual-meeting/
My understanding is that all were refractory to chemo + PD1,
AFMD - trading halted at +80%. Circuit breaker.
AFMD +60% and maybe higher on AFM24+Atezo combo data on EGFRwt and EGFRmut nsclc data on CPI r/r cohorts. ASCO abstract on wt cohort. Company held event Saturday that cover early mut cohort as well.
Lexus Rz is bloated, overpriced and low range relative to competition like Hyundai Genesis. TM needs to have dedicated EV skateboard platform and not jerry-rigged from ICE/HEV.
DoD - project Maven. Haven't heard much since PLTR took over the project from GOOG. $480M 5 yr contract awarded yesterday.
Eff XOM - They can pay the law firms and pound sand.
LLMs - Meta head of AI research talks about GIGO shortcomings and need for different approach to AGI.
https://www.ft.com/content/23fab126-f1d3-4add-a457-207a25730ad9
The "rare" minerals are not rare at all. Processing is the bottleneck. Current processes are emissions heavy and only countries (china) with low environmental/safety restrictions and enforcement have the processing capacity.
CVX/HES/XOM/CNOOC -
Interesting prism for institutional investors. WHO DO YOU TRUST? John Hess v. ISS XOM/CNOOC team now with Schumer. Can't believe any politician would interject their opinion in favor of a side that includes a Chinese STATE OWNED enterprise.
PLTR - more chugging along with some tailwinds from AI adoption. Positive sign from Cramer in bottom link - he won't give opinion on stock because of volatile earnings and CEO declines ad nauseum to go on his show. LOL
https://investors.palantir.com/files/Palantir%20Q1%202024%20Business%20Update.pdf
Robotaxis Observations -
Currently in SValley, what I am seeing in alpha testing are Nuro.ai Pruises and Toyota research Lexus. My feel is that TM is where Waymo was 2-3 yrs ago. Nuro is impressive if the engineers are truly hands-off. AMZN's Zoox still very much stuck from link below. TSLA was biggest Lidar module customer for Luminar in Q1 -
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/13/24155272/amazon-zoox-robotaxi-crash-motorcyclists-rear-end
TSLA - Looks like the CT commercial bust means higher production for semi trucks cia shifting of 4680 cells towards that market. Reviews from commercial trucking testing the semi has been good. I haven't seen any of them on the interstates yet. There are 140 of them. 100 used to transport stuff between Reno and Fremont (Tesla in house use/testing) and ~50 to others, vast majority for Pepsico.
TSLA - CT is a commercial bust. Less than 4000 sold in the first 5 months. Rivian trucks are a common sight in socal where I am now and also in tesla country in norcal.
TSLA - Grid storage is where more profitable growth will come IMO. Model 3 RWD lease deal is $299/mo with 3K down. Dang it's enticing.
https://www.tesla.com/model3/design?utm_locale=en-US&utm_campaign=sales&utm_content=m3_leaseextended&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_term=24q2_m3_lease_extended_batch2#overview
TSLA - FSD in China will not be competitive without Lidar. I think all the leading brands there have Lidar in their high end offerings. I am guessing that Lidar is coming to Tesla models and that 8/8 robotaxis announcement for US means it is coming to that as well. Toyota Research Lidar on their Lexus cuv is getting smaller and more integrated with every iteration but still a big contraption. IMO it's an OK look for a taxis service.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla-clears-key-china-assisted-driving-hurdle-baidu-deal
MSFT - It's not just about .gov systems. You have utility companies involved. It's easy to blame mainframes and COBOL but the fact is that MSFT is the front end and edgeware for almost all these systems and "integration" and O/S substitutions have been happening since the 80s. There may never be a solution without turning off the power and junking entire systems and turning on an entire new system with new software. In the latter case, do you still go with MSFT? It's their turn to answer the question instead of IBM.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/fbi-says-chinese-hackers-preparing-attack-us-infrastructure-2024-04-18/
I am just guessing here. Compensation and annual bonus based upon TTM sales?
Based upon the way PACB shares acted, Q4 numbers were massaged heavily to hide the drop off in sales. Don't understand why ILMN wanted PACB years ago and why FTC objected. NP.
MSFT - It's not a good thing when a company charges extra for being careless and they feel they are too big to be fired.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-has-a-microsoft-problem/
TSLA - The writing was on the wall, the Great Wall (see linked Seagull review in prior post) . Musk accusing Reuters as lying. I doubt that Reuters is lying.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla-abandons-plans-low-cost-ev-report-says
RE the study published June 2023 about Wales data set - from https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vaccine-may-help-protect-against-161500715.html
>>>>>>>>>>>>
The study took advantage of something that happened in Britain in 2013, when the country’s National Health Service rolled out shingles vaccines for everyone born on or after Sept. 1, 1933, but completely excluded those born before that date. Pascal Geldsetzer, a professor of medicine at Stanford and one of the study’s authors, says this created a real-world experiment similar to the kind you get in a lab, where people of similar age—in some cases just a few days or weeks apart—were randomly assigned into two groups.
“We are able to get credibly a causal effect because we are able to exploit this really unique way that the shingles vaccine was rolled out in Britain in the National Health Service,” he tells MarketWatch. “It allows us to compare people who differ by just a week or two in their age. I think it’s a really neat, clean way to mimic what we would do in a clinical trial.”
Incidentally, these U.K. numbers might significantly understate any impact of shingles vaccines on future dementia, although we cannot know for sure. In most cases, those who got a vaccine only got one, rather than successive boosters. The follow-ups were only within seven years. And the study looked only at those who were given the vaccine in their 70s or older.
>>>>>>>>>>>