Russia cuts gas to Austria in payment dispute, keeps EU flows
By Vladimir Soldatkin and Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia halted gas supplies to Austria on Saturday in a dispute over payments but was still pumping steady volumes to Europe via Ukraine after remaining buyers asked for more gas.
Russia, which before the Ukraine war was the biggest single supplier of natural gas to Europe, has lost almost all of its European customers as the EU tries to reduce its dependence and after the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany was blown up in 2022.
Now one of the last main Russian gas routes to Europe – the Soviet-era Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline via Ukraine – is due to shut at the end of this year, as Kyiv does not want to extend a five-year transit agreement which brings northern Siberian gas to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.
Austria said on Friday that Moscow had informed it that the gas would be shut off following an arbitration award to OMV, Austria’s biggest energy supplier, over unfulfilled supplies to its German unit by Russia’s state firm Gazprom.
On Saturday, Austria’s energy regulator E-Control said Gazprom’s deliveries to OMV had stopped at 6 a.m. (0500 GMT), adding that prices and supplies to Austrian customers were steady.
OMV is seeking to recover the 230 million euro ($242 million) damages, awarded during arbitration, from Gazprom by offsetting the claim against invoices for deliveries to Austria – essentially stopping some payments for gas supplied via Ukraine.
Gazprom declined to comment on the suspension of flows to Austria, but the Russian company said it would send 42.4 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, the same volume as on Friday and during every other day in recent months.
Slovak state-owned firm SPP said it was still receiving gas from Russia and added others were buying more.
“The situation when a large consumer stopped taking gas from the east, but the same volume flows through the territory of Ukraine, shows that there is still great interest in this gas in Europe,” SPP said in a statement, without naming the other buyers.
OMV usually accounts for around 40% of Russian gas flows via Ukraine, or some 17 mcm per day.
Austrian grid operator AGGM said it was not currently substituting imports from Germany or Italy. Austria said earlier it had plentiful stocks to cover the shortfall.
GAS POLITICS
Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to President Vladimir Putin on Friday for the first time in nearly two years, as European leaders wait to hear Donald Trump’s ideas on ending the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two.
Is Plug Power Stock a Buy?
Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG) has been a high-profile renewable energy company for more than a decade, hoping to transform how we use energy by making hydrogen fuel more available and cost-effective.
As big as the hydrogen opportunity is, however, the ride for investors has been volatile. Losses have grown despite improving revenue, and hopes for future profitability have been pushed off again and again. Is now a time to buy Plug Power stock or steer clear?
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Plug Power’s appeal to investors has always been about growth. In the mid-2010s, the growth was in materials handling. Then came opportunities in backup power, and recently the opportunity is in electrolyzers turning renewable electricity into hydrogen fuel.
For the most part, the growth story has played out according to plan, with revenue surging over 6,000% since 2000. But revenue doesn’t tell the full story.
Growth without profits isn’t sustainable, and Plug Power’s losses are especially concerning.
Plug Power hasn’t just lost money as it’s grown — losses have outpaced revenue. For each dollar in sales over the past year, the company has lost more than $2 in both net losses and negative free cash flow.
These are not the trends we should be seeing from Plug Power. And there’s no end in sight to the losses.
In the first half of 2024, $145.1 million in equipment sales cost the company $265 million to produce. Power purchase agreements generated $38 million in revenue, but cost $109.5 million in cost of goods sold. Fuel delivered to customers cost $116.9 million to generate and resulted in just $48.2 million in revenue.
If a company can’t make money on what it sells, before paying for operating costs, the business isn’t sustainable.
And these losses aren’t new or temporary. Plug Power has been promising it’s close to adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) break-even for over a decade, which I highlighted as far back as 2017!
What Plug Power has successfully done is raise funds for more than two decades in order to pay for its growth plans. You can see the share count is up 34,800% since the late 1990s, while the share price is down 98.7%.
Burning cash is costly, and investors pay for it through share dilution. But without dilution, the company would have run out of cash long ago.
Plug Power could keep this trend of share sales to fund growth going, but it now has debt on the balance sheet that makes the business riskier.
Palantir's CEO Is Selling Stock; Should Investors Follow Suit?
Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) has been one of the hottest stocks in the market this year, with the stock trading up more than 246% year to date as of this writing.
CEO Alex Karp took a victory lap following his company’s most recent earnings, saying the results were so strong that “I almost feel like we should just go home.” Later he took a swipe at any critics who challenged his sanity in making such a comment.
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But while Karp has been celebrating the success of his company and its stock, he has also been aggressively selling shares of Palantir. This of course begs the question, should investors follow Karp’s lead and sell Palantir stock?
Karp has been a pretty consistent seller of Palantir stock since late 2020, using what is called a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Under these plans, company executives and other insiders set up selling instructions to brokers to sell shares based on a variety of parameters. It can be as simple as selling a set amount of shares on set dates regardless of price, or it could use a set of much more complicated triggers.
Karp appears to be using a more complicated set of triggers, but whatever they are have led to a huge increase in selling by the CEO in the couple of months. All of these recent sales have been through the exercise and then sale of stock options.
Karp’s increased selling began in mid-September when he exercised options and sold 9 million shares at an average price of $36.18, worth $325.6 million.
Just ahead of earnings he exercised options and sold an additional 5.66 million shares at an average price of $45.01, taking home $254.6 million. Then immediately after earnings, he exercised options and sold more than 12.3 million shares at an average price of $52.71, good for proceeds of $650.6 million.
Before the acceleration in selling, Karp’s sales were more in the $15 million to $22 million range.
Karp wasn’t the only insider to sell shares after earnings. Chief Accounting Officer Heather Planishek and Director Lauren Friedman Stat also sold shares via 10b5-1 plans.
This isn’t the first time Palantir has seen big insider selling, with Chairman Peter Thiel setting up a Rule 10b5-1 plan and quickly disposing of more than 28.5 million shares in September and early October.
Palantir is undoubtedly a great company. It initially proved itself by providing data gathering and analytic services to the U.S. government and helping it with such mission-critical tasks as fighting terrorism and tracking COVID-19 cases. It has since become a big artificial intelligence (AI) winner, with the U.S. commercial sector now embracing its AI platform.
Palantir's CEO Is Selling Stock; Should Investors Follow Suit?
Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) has been one of the hottest stocks in the market this year, with the stock trading up more than 246% year to date as of this writing.
CEO Alex Karp took a victory lap following his company’s most recent earnings, saying the results were so strong that “I almost feel like we should just go home.” Later he took a swipe at any critics who challenged his sanity in making such a comment.
Start Your Mornings Smarter! Wake up with Breakfast news in your inbox every market day. Sign Up For Free »
But while Karp has been celebrating the success of his company and its stock, he has also been aggressively selling shares of Palantir. This of course begs the question, should investors follow Karp’s lead and sell Palantir stock?
Karp has been a pretty consistent seller of Palantir stock since late 2020, using what is called a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Under these plans, company executives and other insiders set up selling instructions to brokers to sell shares based on a variety of parameters. It can be as simple as selling a set amount of shares on set dates regardless of price, or it could use a set of much more complicated triggers.
Karp appears to be using a more complicated set of triggers, but whatever they are have led to a huge increase in selling by the CEO in the couple of months. All of these recent sales have been through the exercise and then sale of stock options.
Karp’s increased selling began in mid-September when he exercised options and sold 9 million shares at an average price of $36.18, worth $325.6 million.
Just ahead of earnings he exercised options and sold an additional 5.66 million shares at an average price of $45.01, taking home $254.6 million. Then immediately after earnings, he exercised options and sold more than 12.3 million shares at an average price of $52.71, good for proceeds of $650.6 million.
Before the acceleration in selling, Karp’s sales were more in the $15 million to $22 million range.
Karp wasn’t the only insider to sell shares after earnings. Chief Accounting Officer Heather Planishek and Director Lauren Friedman Stat also sold shares via 10b5-1 plans.
This isn’t the first time Palantir has seen big insider selling, with Chairman Peter Thiel setting up a Rule 10b5-1 plan and quickly disposing of more than 28.5 million shares in September and early October.
Palantir is undoubtedly a great company. It initially proved itself by providing data gathering and analytic services to the U.S. government and helping it with such mission-critical tasks as fighting terrorism and tracking COVID-19 cases. It has since become a big artificial intelligence (AI) winner, with the U.S. commercial sector now embracing its AI platform.
Trump's Election Caused a Sell-Off in Clean Energy Stocks. But Is It an Opportunity for These 2 Industry Leaders?
The election of Donald Trump on Nov. 5 has already led to investors anticipating which stocks might win or lose over the next four years.
One immediate casualty has been clean energy stocks. With a Trump White House and a likely Republican House and Senate, investors fear a repeal of clean energy incentives put in place by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
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Add in concerns that Trump’s tariff and tax cut policy may stoke more inflation, and it could be a perfect storm for clean energy stocks, which were already suffering from the high-interest rate environment over the past few years.
However, the current sell-off may also present an opportunity for certain clean energy stocks. It’s time for investors to seriously look at these two high-quality industry leaders which have been thrown out with the bathwater.
There are two reasons why clean energy stocks might not be as much of a risk as first thought in the new Trump administration.
First, while Republicans have taken Congress, many of the clean energy projects beginning to move forward are actually in red districts. About 75% of the IRA’s spending and job creation has gone to red states or red counties in blue states.
While that fact certainly didn’t help Vice President Kamala Harris win the election, it might keep a full repeal of those incentives at bay. In fact, 18 Republican lawmakers just sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson warning against a full repeal of the IRA, given the benefits they are seeing in their districts. While Republicans are likely to see a majority in the House, the margin will likely be much smaller than 18 votes.
The second factor is Tesla CEO Elon Musk being a big Trump booster and donor. Musk is obviously a proponent of clean energy and will likely have some sway over the new administration’s handling of IRA incentives.
So while there could be some pullback around the edges of the policy, a full repeal of the IRA and its incentives appears unlikely.
Rivian (NASDAQ: RIVN), like many electric vehicle (EV) stocks, sold off after the election. Yet the stock has basically recovered those losses following a generally positive update to the company’s outlook on its recent third-quarter earnings release.
Rivian is somewhat of a start-up, so it’s still losing money. However, its high-end SUVs and the electric delivery trucks it’s making for Amazon have given the company two formidable niches where it’s currently succeeding.
ROSEN, NATIONAL INVESTOR COUNSEL, Encourages Terran Orbital Corporation Investors with Losses in Excess of $100k to Secure Counsel Before Important November 26 Deadline in Securities Class Action – LLAP
NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —
WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of securities of Terran Orbital Corporation LLAP between August 15, 2023 and August 14, 2024, both dates inclusive (the “Class Period”), of the important November 26, 2024 lead plaintiff deadline.
SO WHAT: If you purchased Terran securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.
WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Terran class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=29314 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than November 26, 2024. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.
WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company at the time. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.
DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, during the Class Period, defendants made materially false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose to investors that: (1) it would take much longer than defendants had represented to investors and analysts for Terran to convert its contracts with its customers (collectively, “Customer Contracts”) into revenue and free cash flow; (2) Terran did not have adequate liquidity to operate its business while waiting for the Customer Contracts to generate revenue and free cash flow; (3) Terran had concealed the true scope and severity of its dire financial situation; and (4) as a result of the foregoing, Terran’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.
To join the Terran class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=29314 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.
No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor’s ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.
Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
——————————-
Contact Information:
Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
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case@rosenlegal.com
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1 Dividend Growth Stock Down 45% to Buy Right Now
You usually don’t find great companies executing at the top of their game that also happen to be on sale. Stocks that are on sale are more commonly fallen angels, which are great companies that are facing some near-term hardship. From an investment point of view, the goal is to buy the fallen angels that seem likely to earn their wings again.
That is the backstory behind Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) right now.
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If you are looking for a dividend growth stock the very first thing to consider here is Hormel’s status as a Dividend King. It has raised its dividend every single year for 58 consecutive years. You don’t build a streak like that without doing something right along the way. And, to focus on dividend growth, the annualized dividend growth rate over the past decade was a huge 11%. That’s over 3 times the historical growth rate of inflation, which means the buying power of Hormel’s dividend has been growing over time.
Also of note, Hormel’s dividend yield is around 3.7% today. That’s much higher than the 1.2% you’d collect from an S&P 500 index fund or even the 2.6% from the average consumer staples stock, using the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR as an industry proxy. Hormel’s yield also happens to be near the highest levels in the company’s recent history.
Hormel’s business, meanwhile, is backed by dominant brands focused largely around protein. The list includes, but is not limited to, Hormel, SPAM, Skippy, Planters, Applegate, Jennie-O, and Columbus. Outside of the protein, the company also owns Wholly Guacamole and distributes Herdez. Behind the scenes is the company’s strong position in food service, where it sells pre-cooked meat products. And it has been expanding its portfolio internationally, as well. From a big-picture perspective, there’s a lot to like about Hormel today.
Of course, a company doesn’t end up with a historically high yield for no reason. Hormel’s business makeup is attractive, but it just isn’t hitting on all cylinders today. In the third quarter, the company’s adjusted earnings fell 8%. Sales dropped 2%. And the volume of product it sold was off by 7%. Those are not the types of numbers investors want to see and continue a recent trend of underperformance.
This is why Hormel’s stock price is trading roughly 45% below its five-year high-water mark. The list of problems is fairly long, including difficulty passing on inflation-related cost increases, a slow pandemic recovery in China, avian flu, and a slowdown in the nut segment of the snacking category (which happened right as the company bought Planters). Individually all of these problems are solvable, but all of them at the same time sound pretty bad.
Billionaire Investor Masayoshi Son Is Already $130 Billion Deep in AI Stocks. Now He Thinks Nvidia Is Undervalued.
If you’re looking for a growth stock investor to follow, it’s hard to find one more prolific than Masayoshi Son, the CEO and largest shareholder in Softbank (OTC: SFTBF), a massive diversified holding company based in Japan.
Among Son’s best-known investments are Alibaba, Yahoo, Uber, DoorDash, WeWork, and Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM), in which Softbank owns roughly a 90% stake.
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That investment in Arm, a chip design company that went public last year, has been one of Softbank’s best investments in its history. Softbank took the company private in 2016 for $32 billion, and today that stake is worth roughly $130 billion. The stock has soared since its IPO last September on strong growth from AI-related demand and in the smartphone market.
Son, who had also invested in Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) but regretfully sold his 5% stake in the chip stock back in 2019, now sees more opportunity in the AI sector. Softbank was one of several investors to participate in OpenAI’s latest funding round, investing $500 million into the ChatGPT creator as part of a round that values the start-up at $150 billion.
Son also made a bold statement on the future of AI at a recent conference.
Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative, Son said, “I think Nvidia is undervalued.” He went on to explain that bearish estimates predict that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will only displace 5% of GDP 10 years from now, which is equal to $9 trillion based on expectations of GDP growth.
According to his thinking, that means that there will be $9 trillion in capital expenditures for those chips and data centers and that the AGI running on that infrastructure would be able to generate $9 trillion in revenue a year at a net profit margin of 50%, meaning it would make $4.5 trillion in profit.
Son also said that getting there would require 200 million chips and that it would demand 400 gigawatts, which is more than what the U.S. currently uses in electricity.
That might seem farfetched, but most tech revolutions seem that way beforehand.
The Softbank chief is known just as much for his failures as for his successes. He was a major investor in WeWork before the global coworking business blew up, and he lost $11.5 billion on that investment. In the dot-com bust, he also lost $77 billion in paper wealth at one point, at the time more money than anybody in history had lost.
1 High Yield Dividend Growth Stock Down 13% to Buy Right Now
Realty Income (NYSE: O) has increased its dividend payout every single year for 30 consecutive years, which is an impressive streak. But Realty Income is a real estate investment trust (REIT), so most investors view it as nothing more than an income stock. It does, indeed, offer a high yield.
But if you change your framework just a little, you’ll see how the stock could be attractive to growth-minded investors, too. Let’s dive in and see why.
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Real estate investment trusts operate under a specific corporate structure that is designed to pass their income on to their investors in a tax-advantaged manner. As long as REITs distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders through dividends each year, they avoid corporate-level taxation. Most REITs, including Realty Income, own physical properties that they lease out to tenants.
Realty Income uses a net lease model that makes its tenants responsible for most of the property-level costs of the real estate they occupy, like maintenance and taxes. Most of the company’s assets are occupied by single tenants, which means that there’s a higher level of risk with regard to the rents from each individual property.
However, with over 15,400 properties spread across North America and Europe, Realty Income is the world’s largest net lease REIT, so the actual risk to its finances is pretty low. Add in its investment-grade-rated balance sheet and concerns about risk should fade even further.
In fairness, however, most investors correctly see Realty Income as a conservative income investment. At the current share price, its dividend yields an attractive 5.5%, and it has boosted its payouts annually for three decades. The dividend growth rate over that time? About 4.3% a year. That’s great if you are trying to live off of the dividend income your portfolio generates, but it doesn’t really sound like something that growth-minded investors of any kind would appreciate.
Wait, one second though. What happens if you reinvest those dividends?
One of Realty Income’s most attractive qualities for a certain type of investor is its consistency. It is a slow and steady tortoise. That’s boring — but boring can be powerful when it comes to compound growth. With income stocks, much of that compound growth comes from reinvesting the dividends into more shares. With REITs, that effect becomes even more powerful if done within a Roth IRA, since there will be no taxes paid on the dividend (ever). The numbers speak for themselves.
This Magnificent Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Has Crushed Nvidia in the Past Year. Can It Continue to Skyrocket in 2025?
Nvidia has been in magnificent form on the stock market in the past year, recording stunning gains of almost 207% as of this writing. This is thanks to the consistently strong growth in the company’s top and bottom lines on account of the booming demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
However, there is another AI stock that has outshined Nvidia on the market during this period. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN), a small company that provides voice AI solutions to enterprises, has witnessed a 256% jump in its stock price in the past year, and it is worth noting that Nvidia has played a key role in the stock’s remarkable rally.
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Shares of SoundHound AI received a big shot in the arm earlier in 2024 when it emerged that Nvidia held a small stake in the company. Though SoundHound stock witnessed a lot of volatility following that revelation and saw a sharp decline, it has strung together impressive gains over the past six months.
But the question is, will SoundHound AI be able to continue its red-hot rally in 2025? Let’s take a look at the company’s latest quarterly results and its valuation to see what the coming year might look like for this AI company.
SoundHound released third-quarter 2024 results on Nov. 12. The company’s quarterly revenue jumped an impressive 89% year over year to $25.1 million, while non-GAAP (adjusted) net loss shrank to $0.04 per share from $0.06 per share in the same quarter last year. Consensus estimates compiled by FactSet were expecting SoundHound to post $23 million in revenue along with a loss of $0.07 per share.
The company’s guidance was the icing on the cake. Though SoundHound didn’t issue quarterly guidance, it did increase its revenue estimate for the full year. The company now expects to finish 2024 with $83.5 million in revenue at the midpoint of its guidance range, up from its earlier expectation of at least $80 million.
The updated revenue guidance would translate into an 82% increase in the company’s top line. That would be a nice improvement over the 47% revenue growth SoundHound AI clocked in 2023, suggesting that the company’s conversational AI solutions are gaining impressive traction in the market. Even better, it has released a revenue guidance range of $155 million to $175 million for 2025, suggesting that its revenue could grow at a faster pace next year and nearly double from 2024 levels.