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The Valens Co. (TSX: VLNS) (OTCQX: VLNCF) is buying a Florida-based CBD producer as the Canadian pot product manufacturer’s first foray into the United States.
On Tuesday, the British Columbia-based company said it will acquire Green Roads for US$40 million in cash and stock, plus US$20 million if earnings-based targets are met.
Green Roads is the largest private company in the U.S. that sells non-psychoactive CBD online and in 7,000 retail locations.
Valens says the combined entity would have had sales of $111.6 million in 2020. Valens reported fiscal 2020 net revenue of $83.8 million.
The deal gives it immediate entry into U.S. CBD, and the company says it provides a potential pathway to enter the country’s legal weed market.
While THC products remain illegal at the federal level, there’s speculation that laws will be eased with Democrats in power. Currently, 18 states have legalized recreational cannabis.
“The acquisition of Green Roads represents only the first step in our U.S. expansion strategy,” Valens CEO Tyler Robson said in a statement. “We expect to continue to unlock complementary, revenue-generating opportunities while we forge our presence and build our reputation in the world’s largest cannabinoid market.”
The transaction is expected to be accretive to 2021 earnings, Valens says. The Green Roads brand ranked second by market share in the U.S. CBD market in the third quarter last year, according to Brightfield Group.
Green Roads produces CBD oils, topicals, edibles and pet products at its Current Good Manufacturing Practice-approved facilities.
Cannabidiol sales in the U.S. reached a record $6 billion (US$4.7 billion) last year, Brightfield estimates.
The deal comes amid a wave of consolidation in the cannabis sector as Canadian companies struggle in a highly competitive market slammed with supply gluts.
As sales continue to miss projections, Canadian operators have been seeking access to the larger U.S. market.
Mega-producer Canopy Growth Corp. (TSX: WEED) (Nasdaq: CGC) has signed a deal to merge with Acreage Holdings, Inc. (CSE: ACRG.U) that’s contingent upon the U.S. government legalizing cannabis sales.
And last year rival Aphria Inc. (TSX: APHA) (Nasdaq: APHA) bought U.S. beer company SweetWater Brewing.
After Valens posted record revenue of $31.9 million in first-quarter 2020, an oversupply of bulk resin caused a major slowdown in the extraction market.
The company has since pivoted to a manufacturing strategy in Canada, and has previously stated it intends to expand into the U.S. and international markets.
The Green Roads deal has been approved by Valens’s board of directors and is expected to close in June pending regulatory approval.
Shares of Valens rose 4.6 per cent Tuesday to $3.43 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Top image via Green Roads


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New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are pressuring the FDA to ban a potential carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane, from products (including shampoo and lotions), after discovering that the substance was more prevalent in Long Island’s water supply than anywhere else in the state.
“The fact that 1,4-dioxane, a potentially dangerous chemical, is hiding out in everyday products expected to make us clean is very disturbing, and to make matters worse, likely carcinogens like this one can be even more harmful to kids,” Schumer said in a statement to The Hill.
Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Unlike other problem ingredients like phthalates and parabens, 1,4-dioxane doesn’t appear on the ingredients list of your products, but it’s found in shampoos, hand soaps, conditioners, cleansing solutions, bubble baths, and baby products. The substance has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a “probable human carcinogen,” meaning it’s likely that it can cause cancer in humans. But it hasn’t been banned by the FDA. While cosmetics are part of a largely unregulated industry, there are certain laws and regulations that apply to them, and the FDA could pull a product from shelves if it doesn’t meet the proper regulations.
The compound is a byproduct of a chemical reaction called ethoxylation that is produced when manufacturers mix ingredients, James G. Wagner, Ph.D., an associate professor of pathobiology and diagnostic investigation at Michigan State University, tells SELF. “1,4-dioxane isn’t added during production, which is why it’s not on the label,” he explains. And once you use those products, they wash down the drain and can seep into your local water supply.
Experts tell SELF that it’s hard to tell how much of a threat 1,4-dioxane is to our health, because the exposure is in low concentrations and researchers have only done animal studies on the compound.
Sherry A. Ross, M.D., a women's health expert and author of She-ology: The Definitive Guide to Women's Intimate Health. Period, tells SELF that the chemical is typically found in extremely small or trace amounts. “There is some skin absorption of 1,4-dioxane in cosmetic products, lotions, and children’s shampoos, which can be cause for concern,” she says. “However, your overall risk of developing cancer [from 1,4-dioxane] is minimal.” Wagner agrees. “I think the concern should be on the low level,” he says.
Anton Bilchik, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery and chief of gastrointestinal research at John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, tells SELF that, while animal studies have linked cancer to 1,4-dioxane, he's not aware of a direct link between humans getting cancer from the chemical. "It may well be the case that it does translate to human cancers but I don’t know that we have enough human data to establish the same link as we do between, say, smoking and multiple cancers," he says. But, he adds, 1,4-dioxane is prevalent in a lot of products and drinking water, which is cause for some concern.
When it comes to the water supply and the senators’ efforts, Dr. Bilchick says it’s hard to say how much of a problem the chemical really presents. “[1,4-dioxane] is a threat because it’s present in so many different things, including the water that we drink. Based on that, I think it should be more tightly regulated,” he says.
Sharima Rasanayagam, Ph.D., director of science at Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, agrees, but tells SELF that she’s particularly concerned about pregnant women, infants, and teenagers, because these groups can be more vulnerable to chemical exposures.
If you want to avoid 1,4-dioxane in your personal care products, Rasanayagam recommends buying products that are certified under the USDA National Organic Program, since the chemical is nonexistent in a variety of cosmetics that meet this certification. You can also avoid products that contain ingredients like sodium laureth sulfate, PEG compounds, and chemicals that include the clauses -xynol, -ceteareth, and –oleth, she says—all of which indicate that a product has undergone ethoxylation.
Just don’t lose sleep over this. "Before one gets too concerned about 1,4-dioxane, I would just say that there are so many other carcinogens that we know a lot more about," Dr. Bilchik says. "I wouldn't be alarmed by it, but I would be aware of it."
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As professional cycling comes to terms with the latest round of drugs investigations, the British track sector of the sport is about to become whiter than white.
On Saturday evening the washing powder Persil will announce that it is to back a variety of two-wheel Olympic medallists and hopefuls for Athens through a deal with British Cycling said to be worth more than £300,000.
"I can confirm that British Cycling have signed a new sponsorship deal with one of the UK's leading brands, but I cannot reveal the name," said BC's performance director Dave Brailsford, whose cyclists will have strong medal chances in at least six disciplines in Athens.
The identity of the brand is an open secret among UK bicycle suppliers, who have been quoting for bikes and jerseys to be featured on packet promotions, according to industry sources.
It is likely to be the biggest venture into two-wheel sponsorship by a major British consumer brand since the Prudential ended its backing of the Tour of Britain race in 1999.
According to Brailsford, the deal will focus on two areas, the most visible being a British-based team of Olympic cyclists who will compete together in the domestic calendar between their international engagements in the build-up to Athens. There will also be backing for British Cycling's Go-Ride scheme which brings young cyclists into the sport.
Brailsford has spoken in the past of his plan to create a British team to compete in the Tour de France, and he hopes that the sponsorship package to be announced on Saturday will act as a staging post.
"We're very interested in trying to develop a British Tour de France team," he said. "By working with a brand of this stature we hope that our chances of eventually succeeding will be increased. It's been very noticeable for the last three to six months that cycling is now on the radar of a lot of companies."


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On October 28th, 2021 the Facebook company, owner of the most popular social media with the same name, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, and quite a few more brands, changed its name to Meta. Eight months later, the company of Mark Zuckerberg made the final step to rebranding by changing the stock ticker of the company from FB to META. Let’s see what this means and why it may be an important step for the company.
Why Did Facebook Rebrand to Meta?
According to the official statement of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of former Facebook Company, now Meta, the change of names intends to show the new direction the company is heading. The name brings together the apps and technologies under the new brand, closely connected with the metaverse. That’s where the main focus of Meta also is – to expand the metaverse and connect people with each other, using innovative technologies.
But What Is the Metaverse?
If you’re not that into technologies, you may be wondering what’s the metaverse and why is such a big company going to focus on it. Historically speaking, the metaverse was first introduced in science fiction literature in the 90s and since then, it’s been linked with virtual reality and technologies that will help users immerse themselves in the virtual world.
The recent development of the metaverse, and supposedly why ex-Facebook Company saw its potential, was influenced by Web 3.0 – the new era of the Internet where everyone participates and big companies don’t have the big saying. Companies like Meta work to provide users the opportunity to one day supposedly be able to communicate online just as we do offline – by seeing each other and doing things, except through technologies and avatars. You can buy land online and create your own self living there, so virtual reality has already come a long way. However, companies aim to do even more, ensuring that one day you won’t need apps like Zoom to do your business meetings. Instead, the most common and used way will be to enter a metaverse chatroom with your avatar and your business partner’s one and communicate there, where the environment looks like an office and feels like one, but you’re both at home and you can totally be wearing your pajamas and not get judged about it.
Meta entered the metaverse before changing its name, in 2019 the company launched a VR world called Facebook Horizon (now renamed Horizon Worlds). This is a free online game where people can communicate through avatars and enjoy different activities together in the game.
Why Did Facebook Really Become Meta?
As seen with Horizon Worlds, Zukerberg’s company entered the metaverse before it rebranded. However, many people have expressed suspicions that the change of name wasn’t because the company wants to create this vast virtual space for people or hop on the emerging trend of Web 3.0 and virtual reality.
Instead, many have said that this is Zukerberg’s desperate attempt to distinguish all of his companies from the social media Facebook. Naturally, his company wore the name of the platform he created first. But as Facebook grew in popularity, so did its issues. There have been countless problems reported by people about their privacy, just remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Additionally, this social media has become a place for online bullying, propaganda, and the spread of fake news. Facebook has tried to put some restrictions on content which proved to be highly ineffective and this all led to people not trusting the other companies Zuckerberg owns, like the chat app WhatsApp or Instagram, the other popular social media.
All of this has made some Facebook and Zuckerberg critics believe that the change of the whole company’s name to Meta is a way for him to cover up the connection with Facebook a little and focus the users’ attention on other projects of the company. It’s likely that Meta entered the metaverse sector at a good moment since now everyone seems to be talking about the development of these new technologies.
The pandemic of Covid-19 also helped the metaverse to enhance its growth since people spent a considerable amount of time inside when the restrictions everywhere were stricter. While this brought revenue to chat and online meeting apps, the metaverse also benefited from users who wanted to somehow meet without being there in person.
All that could be said is this – whether Meta is Zuckerberg’s attempt to tell people “Please, we’re not only Facebook”, or he really wants to enter the metaverse, we could only speculate on his real motives. However, this is a sector with very high potential. This means that whatever Meta’s initial motives were, it’s likely to benefit immensely for the future growth of the metaverse.
What Does Trading Under $META Mean?
On June 9th Mark Zuckerberg took it to his personal Facebook page to announce:
And if you’re not very familiar with any kind of trading, you may be wondering what that means. Let us explain.
Meta is a public company. This means that its shares can be found and bought on stock exchanges by everyone. Every company that trades publicly has a ticker symbol for its stocks. The ticker symbol could be an abbreviation of the name of the company or even feature numbers, and is used to represent the company on stock exchanges. For example, Apple’s stock ticker is APPL and the PayPal one is PYPL.
Since Meta’s previous name was Facebook Company, the stock ticker for it until today was FB. By changing the stock ticker symbol from FB to META, the company has managed to achieve another step in its rebranding.
$META Stock: What Now When Facebook Is trading under $META?
The biggest change now stock traders may experience when Meta changed its stock ticker to META is that they’ll have to look for it again on the stock exchange since FB is no longer offered. If you search for FB on Nasdaq, the American stock exchange, you won’t be able to find the stocks of Meta.
However, since the stock ticker now is the very same as the name of the company, you could just type Meta, even if you don’t know you need to look for $META, and get the results. So practically nothing has changed besides that you may not find the stocks if you keep looking for FB.
When Facebook went Meta, the shares of Meta rose in sales. But not the right one. Meta Materials, a Canadian company, trading under the symbol of MMAT, got a spike in their sales because people thought they were buying Meta (Facebook) stocks instead. Now that Zuckerberg’s company has changed its stock ticker symbol to META, matching completely with the company’s name, it will likely be less confusing for people and they’ll be able to buy the right stocks.
In case you’re curious about how the Meta shares are doing in real-time, you can check the graph below.
Has The Facebook Company Completely Transitioned to Meta?
Now that the ticker symbol of the company’s shares is no longer FB but META, it could be said that the metamorphosis of Facebook is complete. Though it’s very unlikely that people will stop calling the whole brand with the social media’s name any time soon, it’s just how it’s popular. However, Meta is doing everything it can to put a line between the brand and one of its products. We’re looking forward to how it’ll develop in the future and if it can escape the bad reputation of Facebook and create something new and cool in the metaverse.


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Detroit Delivers Pitch For New Amazon Headquarters
The Motor City's pitch for Amazon's second headquarters has been delivered.
Rock Ventures spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger says Detroit's bid was "delivered via FedEx and electronically" by the Thursday deadline set by the Seattle-based online retail giant for cities across the U.S. and in Canada.
At stake are the potential for billions of dollars in investment and the promise of 50,000 jobs.
Businessman and Rock Ventures founder Dan Gilbert was tabbed by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to put together the city and region's proposal.
Eichinger says a large regional group worked on the Amazon bid. A three-and-a-half-minute video touting advantages offered by Detroit and the state of Michigan was released online Thursday.
A line from the video says "if you move here, you move the world."


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One of Louisville’s most highly anticipated albums of 2015 is finally about to be set loose. Scrape Or Die, the latest effort from hip hop experts Skyscraper Stereo will hit the streets August 11th via Little Heart Records and will be available in the form of cassette, CD and digital download. Preview the new album by listening to their latest fantastic single “10 Second Dance Party” below:
To celebrate the release of Scrape Or Die, a release show will be held on Friday, August 7th at The New Vintage. Joining Skyscraper Stereo will be Uh Huh Baby Yeah and Allen Poe, with the price of admission being ten bucks; music starts at 9PM. All attendees will receive a free copy of the new album; for more information on the show, go here.
NOTE: This purchase also gets you admission into the release show mentioned above!


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Brazil expects to export more meat to the Philippines
Following a ban in 2017 over Salmonella issues, the Brazilan Animal Protein Association (ABPA) says that in 2018 the shipments of meat from Brazil to the Philippines have "strongly improved", as reported by the Business Mirror.
The executive director of ABPA Ricardo Santin told Business Mirror that the interest in Brazilian poultry and pork grew because the Latin American country is free from avian influenza and African swine fever.
In 2018, Brazil exported 47.62% more poultry meat to the Philippines in 2018 than a year ago, reaaching 52,454.218 metric tons.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian pork exports to the Philippines grew by 481.9% to 12,055.879 MT in the mentioned period.
ASF in Germany is going to change the global pork trade patterns in the following months, believe...
The presence of African swine fever disease in wild boars in Germany has led to a ban on pork imp...


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It was supposed to be the phone that saved BlackBerry – but the firm said IN July that it would stop making its Classic smartphone, less than two years after launching it with much fanfare.
Ralph Pini, the company’s chief operating officer and general manager for devices, said the Classic has long surpassed the average lifespan for a smartphone in today’s market.
‘We are ready for change so we can give our customers something better,’ said Pini in a company blog post.
The BlackBerry Classic hit the market in December 2014.
It offered customers a 3.5-inch (88.9-millimeter) screen, which was 60 percent larger than the previous BlackBerry Bold 9900.
It also had longer battery life and a standard keyboard and touch screen
Handsets with the BlackBerry name will be produced under license by PT Tiphone Mobile Indonesia Tbk, allowing the Canadian firm to concentrate on software and services, a statement by the firms said.
BlackBerry will take a royalty on devices sold by the Indonesian firm.
‘We are reaching an inflection point with our strategy. Our financial foundation is strong, and our pivot to software is taking hold,’ said chief executive John Chen, pointing to a doubling of software revenue over the last financial year, reports AFP.
‘The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital,’ said Mr Chen.
BlackBerry, which a decade ago was among the largest smartphone makers, has seen its global market share slip to less than one percent amid domination by Apple and Android devices.
As the market shifted, BlackBerry has shifted its focus to software, including security applications, and the latest announcement takes the company out of the handset market entirely.
It had hoped its first Android-operating smartphone launched last year would help restore the company to its former glory but the handset wasn’t a big hit.
Earlier this year, BlackBerry announced that it was killing off its Classic smartphone with a physical keyboard – once the workhorse of the smartphone market – in order to modernise its lineup.
The oddly shaped BlackBerry Passport, which launched in 2014, was met with a mixed response largely thanks to its odd dimensions
In 2013, the company unveiled its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 software alongside the Z10 handset, but the both were already way behind their iOS and Android rivals by the time they were ready to launch.
Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at uSwitch.com, said: ‘In spite of a small yet loyal-to-the-death contingent of fans, BlackBerry simply couldn’t survive a market dominated by two mobile behemoths’
‘BlackBerry addicts will no doubt be gutted by the news, but this is one mobile maker that just made too many mistakes,’ he added.
While BlackBerry has already started outsourcing its smartphone manufacturing, it will back out entirely by the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer John Chen said on a call with analysts, reports Reuters.
Mitie said its profits would be “materially below” its expectations as a result of challenges it faced.
These included lower UK growth rates, changes to labour laws and public sector spending cuts.
It also said “uncertainty both pre and post the EU referendum” was to blame.
Mitie is one the UK’s largest outsourcing groups, offering facilities management services to clients such as the NHS, London City Airport and Linkedin.
Its profit before tax increased by 0.7% to £114.1m in 2015, but in May this year it warned uncertainty around the EU referendum was causing clients to delay or cancel projects .
It also said that the introduction of the National Living Wage in April would add to its costs in 2016.
The company, which is led by chief executive Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith, said it was taking “strong action” to counter the impact of these pressures including making cost savings across the group.
It also said a stronger forecast second half would lead to a slight growth in sales at the end of the year.
However, operating profits are expected to be significantly below expectations. According to Reuters, analysts Liberum have cut their full-year earnings per share guidance by 8%, warning that Mitie’s management is preparing for a 10-20% fall in core earnings.
The news could also negatively impact rival outsourcing groups Carillion and Interserve, Liberum said.
In early afternoon trading, Mitie shares were down more than 2% to 298.9p.
Analysis: Simon Jack, business editor
The city exacts a heavy price from companies whose profits don’t live up to expectations. Even by the city’s harsh standards, today’s plunge was spectacular.
The value of Mitie fell by a quarter because the reasons it gave were not flash-in-the-pan problems, but significant economic pressures which highlight trends of interest to a wider group than the outsourcing company’s shareholders.
Mitie said profits will be hit by a triple whammy of a higher minimum wage, declining local authority budgets and Brexit concerns.
The national living wage saw minimum rates of pay rise from £6.50 to £7.20 an hour in April. Previously, the company said this would have minimal impact on its profits, so today marked a change of tune.
Back in May the company warned that many big customers were holding budgets back ahead of the 23 June referendum. Today, Mitie said that the continuing uncertainty surrounding the kind of Brexit the UK negotiates meant that still held true.
Mitie also provides social care and housing maintenance services to local councils, and the company said it was feeling the effects of cuts to their budgets.
Mitie is in many ways a microcosm of some of the big issues facing UK businesses – and as the city reminded it today, not in a good way.
If all British sectors were as buoyant as outsourcing, our new chancellor would be swinging from the chandeliers of Number 11. Contracts worth £3.91 billion were signed in the first half of the year, a rise of 19 per cent year on year, according to the arvato Outsourcing Index. Local government spending on outsourcing almost doubled in the same period. Plus there are wonderful new technologies to talk about, such as robotic process automation, which is a new field in the sector.
All blue skies and sunshine? Not quite. The vote on June 23 for Britain to leave the EU triggered a mass of questions for the industry. Few sectors straddle borders like outsourcing. Industry veterans can navigate the back streets of Bangalore and Bratislava with their eyes shut. Brexit may mean Brexit, but what is the industry facing?
First up, outsourcing seems to have carried on with business as usual. No hysterics. That is borne out by transaction numbers and investor confidence.
Alex John, partner at international mergers and acquisitions consultants Livingstone, which works heavily in outsourcing deals, says: “We are not seeing any drop in investor confidence. In fact, we are seeing good levels of investor interest, from both UK and overseas investors. The present view on Brexit seems to be that the UK economy is weathering the storm extremely well and therefore remains a good market for investment.”
When Brexit actually occurs we may see a few changes. Trade with the EU will depend on the deal struck. We have no idea what that deal will be.
We do know that the UK will lose a large number of trade agreements with the rest of the world, currently enjoyed under the EU umbrella. Reverting to World Trade Organization rules, with no additional deals, is an option in many cases. The downside is that tariffs may be higher. And there might be areas of conflict and lack of legal clarity.
The UK will also need to decide whether to participate in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which covers law enforcement and equal treatment of overseas parties.
Since the UK will be trying to replace 53 preferential trading agreements currently held by the EU with the rest of the world, it may need to prioritise certain markets. India is a prime jurisdiction. The UK is the largest G20 investor in India and India invests more in the UK than in rest of the EU combined.
A fortnight after the Brexit vote, then-business minister Sajid Javid flew to Delhi to meet the Indian commerce minister and finance minister, both of whom confirmed India would be keen to start work on a deal as soon as possible. The Indian private sector echoed this.
Confederation of Indian Industry director general Chandrajit Banerjee spoke enthusiastically of an Anglo-Indian free trade deal: “With Britain’s departure from the EU, India will have to negotiate a free trade agreement with the UK which may be easier to accomplish at a bilateral level… This could well be the best era for our industries to collaborate.”
The new department for Brexit will need to resolve some tricky issues. For example, the physical location of data is a hot question in outsourcing.
Mark Turner, vice president of IT delivery at T-Systems, the corporate customer arm of Deutsche Telekom, explains: “Location is now a key question for UK CIOs [chief information officers]. Brexit will have pushed the accelerator, but the direction of travel was already set by the worries surrounding the reach of US jurisdictions.
“UK companies that only operate in the UK are looking for data centres located in the UK, whereas companies that operate in Europe and need to adhere to European data security rules want to locate their data in Europe. Three years ago, CIOs didn’t care where their data was as long as it was safe; now location is central to decision-making.”
Onshore versus offshore
The onshoring-versus-offshoring debate will be renewed by Brexit. Trends may be counter-intuitive. For example, a lack of free movement might result in more offshoring.
This will more than likely lead to an increase in offshore outsourcing in order to compensate for less freedom of movement of skilled workers into the UK
Robert Barbus, operations director for the Slovakia-originated Soitron Group, says: “Brexit may make it difficult for skilled Polish and other EU-CEE [central and eastern European] IT workers from gaining work permits in the UK. Equally for onshoring businesses, which depend on staff from within the EU, it’s most likely the CEE region, including Slovakia, Czech Republic and Bulgaria, will find it hard to gain visas, and the cost of gaining work visas may not make this form of outsourcing viable.
“This will more than likely lead to an increase in offshore outsourcing in order to compensate for less freedom of movement of skilled workers into the UK.”
Obviously no one can say what Brexit will look like. As a result, we’ll see a more cautious approach to outsourcing – not fewer deals, but simply higher risk management. There are signs this is already happening.
Simon Scarrott, business development director of Timico Technology Services, says: “As uncertainty in the business and IT market remains post-EU referendum, we are seeing more companies turning to fixed-priced outsourcing contracts as they look to control their budgets and derisk the purchasing process.”
The outsourcing industry has a proud history of flourishing in the face of perverse trade deals, legal bureaucracy and political uncertainty. Brexit may throw up challenges, but so far there is no reason to think the industry won’t simply march on regardless.
Prudential workers are to strike in a dispute over jobs being moved to Mumbai
Workers at insurance giant Prudential are to stage two 24-hour strikes in a dispute over the outsourcing of jobs to India.
Members of Unite based in Reading will walk out on September 16 and 23 in protest at annuity work being switched to Mumbai.
Unite regional officer Ian Methven said: “The Prudential has got itself tied up in knots over this unnecessary offshoring exercise.
“The management is unclear about how many jobs are at risk and how much money will allegedly be saved.
“This confusion smacks of rank incompetence. As a result, our members will be staging two 24-hour strikes as a major shot across the company’s bows. Customer services for annuities will be severely affected on the strike days.
“We want the management to reconsider its decision which risks losing over 500 years of collective knowledge and experience in Reading.”
When I was a student studying industrial economics at the University of Nottingham two questions fascinated me: why do we need large firms to produce goods and services (instead of relying on smaller enterprises and markets)? And if we do need large firms, why do they not keep in house every aspect of their supply chain and associated production process?
I admit that, during my first and second years of study I needed to get out more, though deciding to make up lost time and party hard in my final year probably wasn’t the best idea. Nevertheless I still spent many happy hours reading dusty tomes on the optimal size and structure of firms.
Of course the reasons why large firms keep certain processes in-house, while outsourcing for others, are to save costs and increase operational efficiency. In the case of outsourcing, a service provider may be able to conduct a particular activity or process at a lower cost, due to economies of scale or cheap labour. In terms of efficiency an outsource service provider may have the specialist skills and experience needed to conduct certain activities/processes more quickly and reliably, increasing output and customer satisfaction.
Dr Simon Ashby: Outsourcing comes with its own problems, but don’t rule it out entirely
Typically, Outsourcing Projects take a long time to procure and deliver. This can be bad news for both customer and supplier
Often, there is mismatch between what a customer thought that it was buying and what is ultimately delivered.
Often, it takes longer.
Often, it costs more.
Often, there is dissatisfaction.
In a fast moving environment, this can be disastrous.
Understanding the phases of an outsourcing
All outsourcings involve:
the transition of the responsibility for providing a service from the customer or an incumbent supplier to a new supplier; and the provision of the transitioned service from the service commencement date for the term of the contract.
In addition, most outsourcing projects involve a transformation phase pursuant to which the supplier will implement changes to the way in which the services are delivered so as to meet the requirements of the customer and/or the recommendations of the supplier for doing things differently.
Typically, both the transition and transformation elements are contracted for on the basis of fixed requirements and/or a fixed solution which, from the customer’s perspective is delivered against fixed milestones for a fixed cost. This should still Doing outsourcing projects differently
The economics of process robotics promises to shake up the outsourcing sector, creating a new dialog among vendors, business executives and CIOs.
Process robotics, also known as robotic process automation (RPA), aims to take over the manual effort involved in carrying out a range of IT and business process activities. With this technology, software robots can be configured to handle tasks traditionally assigned to humans. Repetitive, rules-based business processes, such as payroll processing, fall into this category. On the IT side, RPA can automate help desk requests, such as password resets. RPA’s envisioned reach extends beyond high-volume, transactional activities to judgment-based processes that have previously demanded human discernment. So-called cognitive RPA systems, built upon artificial intelligence, seek to take on the latter process type.
RPA’s potential to replace human labor has put the technology on a collision course with offshore outsourcing, a practice based on labor arbitrage. While the actual labor savings stemming from RPA depends on the nature of a given process, the technology is thought to deliver greater cost reduction than outsourcing.
“For the majority of processes, especially transactional ITO/BPO [IT outsourcing/business process outsourcing] processes, it is significantly less expensive,” said Dave Kuder, principal, business model transformation Process robotics: The economics of digital labor shakes up …
According to Hollywood stereotypes, there are the clever, nerdy young people who spend most of their time sitting around thinking and reading, and then there are the jocks – the sporty, athletic lot who prefer to do as little thinking and studying as possible. This seems like a gross over-simplification and yet a new study in the Journal of Health Psychology suggests there may be a kernel of truth to it.
The researchers, led by Todd McElroy at Florida Gulf Coast University, gave an online test of “Need For Cognition” to lots of students, to find 30 who expressed a particularly strong desire to think a lot and 30 others with a strong preference to avoid anything too mentally taxing. This test has been around for over three decades and it involves people rating how strongly they agree with items like “I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems” and “I only think as hard as I have to”. The 30 thinkers and 30 non-thinkers then wore an accelerometer on their wrist for 7 days, to provide a constant measure of how physically active they were during that time.
The thinkers Are brainy people lazy? "Need For Cognition" correlates with less physical activity
By Milan Sheth Today robots pick-pack boxes in warehouses; assemble varied objects as small and delicate as smartphones and as large and complex as aircraft engines. Automation is making rapid inroads into IT and business processes, transforming human to system and system to system interactions. This raises a pertinent question for customers-why outsource when you can automate to get the cost advantage?
Intelligent automation presents itself as the best-suited solution for majority of rules-driven processes being outsourced today (infrastructure management or IM, business process management or BPM and application management and testing) – redefining the offshoring versus on-shoring debate.
While there is a scope to bring down the headcount by over 50% and reduce costs up to 70% in an optimally automated IM contract, automation also poses a dilemma for enterprises–adopt a cost-effective automation fix to solve technology problems or choose an end-to-end automation solution which may require a higher upfront investment?
Robotic process automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are poised to redefine IT-BPM industry. Robotics has played a pivotal role in transforming the shop floor and assembly lines in the manufacturing sector. Now, software robotics is gaining traction across healthcare, insurance, banking and Outsourcing is passe, it’s time to build a smart bot empire


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Hijab has gone mainstream but modest clothing stores already had that 'covered'
More and more Western mainstream retailers and designers are marketing to Muslim women. Last year H&M, the world's second largest retailer, made headlines after they released an ad with Mariah Idrissi wearing a checkered hijab and a long modest jacket.
This past February, Kayne West's Yeezy Season Five fashion show included Halima Aden, a Hijabi model. Aden donned the catwalk wearing a long fur coat, heels and a hijab.
This month Nike released their version of an athletic hijab. Nike's light weight hijab helps the company expand into the Middle East and tap into the modest clothing market.
While many applaud the inclusion of hijabs and modest fashion by popular retailers, there are numerous online modest retailers that have had Muslim women 'covered' for years.
Online modest clothing companies such as JustLongShirts have been designing and providing women who choose to dress modestly, with chic, stylish and modest options. JustLongShirts slogan is "modest clothes for the modern woman" and has various modest shirts from long sleeve tees to formal tops.
In 2004 Bahraini sprinter Ruqaya Al-Ghasra was the first woman to compete in the Olympics in hijab. She wore a a breathable sports Hijood created by Aheda Zanetti. At the Rio Olympics, Ibtihaj Muhammad won a bronze metal in fencing wearing a hijab - an unbranded hijab, unlike that of Nike's which displays the company's swoosh logo prominently on the side of the hijab.
The pro of big box retailers adding the hijab to their lineup is that they will be visible to purchase. However, let us not get caught up in the hype surrounding these releases. Women such as Zanetti are pioneers in developing items that Muslim and modest women needed. What is being done now is taking items such as the Hijood and Burkini and rebranding them. Let's celebrate the variety that will be added, not the development of what is already available.


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The topic of exploding phones seems to be a trending one, regardless if we’re talking about Android devices or iPhones. It all started with the Note7, and it’s been on and off the headlines. An iPhone X allegedly exploded after an iOS update, and that’s the last we heard a story involving a phone doing something it’s not supposed to. Now a man claims that his brand new iPhone XS Max simply exploded while in his pocket.
The person is being referred to as J. Hillard, and he sent in a report, accompanied by pictures, to iDrop News, who broke the story exclusively. It all allegedly happened on December 12, 2018, around 3 P.M., somewhere near Columbus, Ohio. A strange smell came out of his back pocket, where the phone allegedly was, and, at the same time, he claims to have felt a “large amount of heat” burning his skin. Moments later green and yellow smoke came out of the iPhone.
Left no other option, I had to exit the room since there was a female in the break room with me and remove my pants. I ran to the boardroom where I got my shoes and pants off as fast as possible. A VP of our company put the fire out with a fire extinguisher because he heard me yelling.
After taking the phone in at an Apple Store, a replacement unit was offered only in return of the damaged phone, which was supposed to end up with the “engineering team”. Hillard didn’t accept the situation and took his burned phone back home from where he called Apple Care.
Hit the source link to read the entire story, which ends up with Hillard asking for “restitution for the clothes and shoes ruined in the incident, as well as costs to cover his wireless service which he was unable to use during his time negotiating with Apple”.
Here’s hoping the 2018 iPhones don’t start a new trend!


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From Home Furnishing Business
Natuzzi Reports 2022 Third Quarter Results Versus 2021 in Challenging Market
Natuzzi S.p.A., producer and distributor of design and luxury furniture, reported its unaudited financial information for the third quarter and first nine months ended Sept. 30.
Third Quarter (3Q) 2022 invoiced sales amounted to €116.6 million, an increase of 14.5% versus 3Q 2021 and 32.4% versus pre-pandemic 3Q 2019. 3Q 2022 branded invoiced sales amounted to €103.7 million, an increase of 22.5% versus 3Q 2021 and 57.6% versus 3Q 2019.
Gross margin resulted of 37.7%, compared to 36.0% in 3Q 2021 and 28.7% in 3Q 2019, despite persisting high raw materials costs and the spike in energy costs.
Pasquale Natuzzi, chairman of the group commented, “We continue improving our operating model, as shown by the Ebit result of this quarter. However, the business environment for the whole economy and specifically for our industry remains challenging.”
“The high inflation is reducing the disposable income of our consumers. This, together with a perduring uncertainty on the geopolitical and economic outlook, is leading consumers to postpone their decision to buy furniture.”
“These dynamics have caused a weaker demand starting from April. We remain committed to our long-term growth plan, but we need to acknowledge the unexpected conditions of the market we are facing. I have the highest confidence in our CEO and our team to overcome the short-term challenges posed by the market to our turnaround.”
Antonio Achille, CEO of the group commented: “In the third quarter, the work our team is doing to improve marginality, while continuing to support the growth of our revenues, started to become visible. We improved marginality by almost 10 percentage points vs 2019 notwithstanding the pressure of energy and other production costs on our P&L.”
2022 first nine months operating profit of €6.7 million, compares to €4.3 million in 2021 same period, that benefitted From €4.2 million one-off COVID-related measures. The operating profit of €6.7 million compares to a loss of (€19.5) million in 2019 first nine months.
Achille continued, “At the same time, we are not isolated from the negative market dynamics that affect consumers and retailers globally. Traffic in our stores has been decreasing since April and our retail partners, most notably in US, are still dealing with the extra stock they have built over the last months, which limits their ability to place new orders.”
“We shared the general hope that the Chinese Congress would have reviewed and lifted some of the zero-covid policies which instead continue being a main obstacle to our growth plan for the Region. The combination of these effects is causing a material reduction in the pace of new orders.”
3Q 2022 profit per ordinary share of €0.10, or €0.50 per American depositary receipt (ADR), versus a loss per ordinary share in 3Q 2021 of (€0.07), or (€0.35) per ADR, and a loss per ordinary share in 3Q 2019 of (€0.21), or (€1.05) Per ADR.
“Our commercial team is committed and working hard to sustain revenues in response of these market challenges. We are also evolving and strengthening our commercial organizations in our main geographies, including US and Europe, to better manage our existing clients and enrich the client portfolio with new selective introductions.”
“On the retail front, we continue investing to improve the organic growth of our stores reaching the level of retail excellence the Company aspires to, for the benefit of both our DOS and our franchising partners.”
“To accelerate this process, we recently hired a new senior manager, Mr. Michele Ciani, who will be responsible for the Retail Customer Experience for the Group. Michele brings a wealth of deep retail knowledge and more than 20 years of experience within multination furniture retailers to help them sharpening their brand & story visual identity in Europe and China.”
3Q 2022 operating profit of €4.1 million compares to an operating loss of (€0.4) million in 3Q 2021 and an operating loss of (€8.7) million In 3Q 2019.
Cash of €53.0 million as of Sept. 30 compares to €53.5 million as of Dec. 31, and €39.8 million as of Dec. 31.
“Despite the adverse market conditions, we continued our retail journey: during the first nine months of 2022, we added 55 Natuzzi franchise stores, of which 43 located in China. This brings the total number of stores to 708, of which 51 DOS directly managed by the Group in addition to 24 DOS directly managed by our JV in China.”
Store traffic and new orders continue the negative trend started in April and are below expectations given the challenges affecting the core markets where we operate.
“The price adjustments, enacted in the first part of the year to contrast the rising trend in the cost of transportation, energy, raw materials and production inputs, are now almost entirely factorized in the top line and that have helped us protect our marginality from the continue pressure of cost on our business.”
“In response to the tough market conditions, we have launched a set of actions to lower the costs of our G&A, tightly manage our working capital and protect our cash position,” Achille concluded.
Current exchange rate: $100 US = $96.59 Euros


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Sept. 22, 2012 | Natural News
by John Phillip
A wealth of scientific evidence continues to demonstrate the powerful health benefits of consuming a wide variety of polyphenols from natural foods. In past studies, resveratrol, curcumin and grape seed extract have been shown to help prevent cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia as these amazing compounds alter genetic expression to improve cellular metabolism and improve critical biomarkers.
Swedish researchers have published the result of a study conducted at the Karolinska Institute in the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology that shows eating a moderate amount of chocolate each week may be associated with a lower risk of stroke in men. Lead study author Dr. Susanna Larsson commented “While other studies have looked at how chocolate may help cardiovascular health, this is the first of its kind study to find that chocolate, may be beneficial for reducing stroke in men.”
To conduct the study, 37,103 Swedish men aged between 49 and 75 years were given a food questionnaire to determine how often they consumed various foods and drinks. Additionally, the cohort was asked how often they ate chocolate. Researchers then identified the total number of stroke cases recorded through the decade-long study time frame. Over 10 years, there were 1,995 cases of first stroke.
Antioxidants from chocolate improve endothelial artery function to reduce stroke risk
Researchers found that the men consuming the highest amount of chocolate (approximately one-third of a cup of chocolate chips each day) had a 17 percent lower risk of stroke, or 12 fewer strokes per 100,000 person-years compared to those who ate no chocolate. In a related study of 4,260 stroke cases, the risk of stroke was 19 percent lower for those individuals eating the highest number of grams (50 grams or one-quarter cup) of chocolate per day. This study found that stroke risk declined 14 percent for every additional 50 grams of chocolate consumed.
Dr. Larsson concluded “The beneficial effect of chocolate consumption on stroke may be related to the flavonoids in chocolate. Flavonoids appear to be protective against cardiovascular disease through antioxidant, anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory properties. It’s also possible that flavonoids in chocolate may decrease blood concentrations of bad cholesterol and reduce blood pressure.”
Many prior studies involving chocolate and cocoa consumption determined that dark chocolate sources were most beneficial. This study found that the type of chocolate consumed (90 percent milk chocolate in Sweden) was not a factor and conferred the same results regardless of cocoa content. Nutrition experts still recommend consuming dark chocolate with an 85 percent coca content to avoid excess dietary sugar and significantly lower risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.
Sources for this article include:
About the author:
John Phillip is a Certified Nutritional Consultant and Health Researcher and Author who writes regularly on the cutting edge use of diet, lifestyle modifications and targeted supplementation to enhance and improve the quality and length of life. John is the author of ‘Your Healthy Weight Loss Plan’, a comprehensive EBook explaining how to use Diet, Exercise, Mind and Targeted Supplementation to achieve your weight loss goal. Visit My Optimal Health Resourceto continue reading the latest health news updates, and to download your Free 48 page copy of ‘Your Healthy Weight Loss Plan’.


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Roller Coaster Week on Wall Street Highlights Trade Debate
President Trump is pushing back on concerns over the risk of a recession facing the U.S. economy.
It comes after a roller coaster week on Wall Street.
Over the weekend, the president tried to calm fears of a recession.
He says the 2017 tax cuts have made American consumers rich.
President Trump’s economic advisers also chimed in.
Director of the U.S. economic council Larry Kudlow pointed to strong retail and a low unemployment rate as signs the U.S. economy is still strong.
Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro is also rejecting any talk of a recession.
Democrats say the president’s policies are not working and continuing the trade war with China is not the way forward.
President trump insists the U.S. economy is poised for growth after the trade deals are done.
But after months of negotiations between China and the U.S. there is still no trade deal in sight.


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FreeWheel, a Comcast company and the industry’s most complete advertising management solution, has announced the launch of its Q1 2019 Video Marketplace Report, which shows a rise in targeted and addressable advertising as publishers and marketers increasingly look to efficiently reach audiences.
In Europe, there is a focus on data-driven targeting and automation as a growing number of publishers adopt an audience-first approach. Total ad views grew 13 per cent, but live ad views increased by 78 per cent year-over-year.
Audience targeted campaigns also grew above the market growth rate, rising 56 per cent as publishers increase the use of data to make premium video addressable.
Programmatic has experienced significant growth, increasing 31 per cent year-over-year – four times the rate of direct sales – as publishers strive to automate and drive efficiencies in the buying process.
However, premium video still makes less use of programmatic channels than the wider digital video ecosystem, where 74.1 per cent of digital video is traded programmatically.
FreeWheel general manager international Thomas Bremond commented: “Premium video displayed strong ad view growth, particularly in audience-targeted campaigns.
“Data-driven advertising is changing the way advertisers and publishers approach premium video, as a growing number adopt an audience first-approach. With continued improvements and advancements to the tech stack across multiple endpoints the outlook for premium video looks very promising through the rest of the year and beyond.”
The enabling of premium video inventory across Set-top Box Video on Demand (STB) and Connected TV (CTV) once again demonstrated the power of the big screen, together accounting for the largest share of ad views at 45 per cent.
There is also an ongoing drive towards shorter ad breaks. Total ad break durations were around 94 seconds and there was an average of four ads per midroll break, with 42 per cent of all midroll breaks containing two ads or less.
Other findings from the report included:
- The addition of more live inventory is furthering the scale of premium video with the share of live ad views now twice as large as that of Q1 2018.
- Desktop leads the devices used to view live premium video with over 40% of live ad views.
- 25 per cent of campaigns are audience targeted
The FreeWheel Video Marketplace Report is released quarterly and highlights the changing dynamics of how enterprise-class content owners and distributors are monetising premium digital video content. The data set used for this report is one of the largest available on the usage and monetisation of professional, rights-managed video content worldwide, and is based on census-level advertising data collected through the FreeWheel platform.
A new global report on the damaging effects of promoting fossil fuels has singled out Australia as being uniquely compromised by agencies lobbying for oil, gas and coal. The joint study by Australian organisations Comms Declare and Clean Creatives lists the 90 advertising, marketing and PR agencies that have hampered cuts to greenhouse gas emissions […]
Freedom Foods and 72andSunny Sydney have launched the first advertising campaign for Australia’s Own range of plant-based beverages. The campaign introduces a new visual world and identity for the brand and captures the healthy, positive feeling you get when spending time in nature and when consuming Australia’s Own certified-organic, plant-based beverages. As well as featuring […]
Nine creatives from APAC are among the 94 finalists from 27 countries in The One Club for Creativity’s prestigious Young Guns 19 competition, celebrating international creative professionals age 30 or younger. The finalists from APAC are: Hiu Ching Kung, graphic designer, Hong Kong Lam Ieong Kun, graphic designer, illustrator, indego design, Macau Raxenne Maniquiz, graphic designer, illustrator, Santa Maria (Philippines) Kiyotaka […]
OOH transit company Adflow has announced the success of the first phase of its regional expansion program. Adflow’s regional footprint has increased by 60 per cent to now include 65 regional locations. With 9.1 million people living regionally in Australia (growth of 1.1 per cent experienced in the 19/20 Financial year) and most regional centres […]
Freshworks, a leading software company, has started trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, marking an important milestone for the company. The company priced its IPO at US$36 per share (AU$49.76), raising about US$1 billion (AU$1.4B), resulting in a total market capitalisation of AU$13.7 billion (US$10B). Freshworks, which was founded in India, has strong roots […]
Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) is the biggest player in the holiday shopping game and Google’s most recent research suggests consumer interest for the peak sales season starts much earlier than retailers may realise. The pandemic has fundamentally changed buyer behaviour over peak sales season, with Google suggesting that global consumer interest in Black Friday […]


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AWS has wheeled out a fresh version of EC2 with high amounts of memory available – up to 12TB today, the firm says, with promises of 24TB by next year.
The intent is to make AWS attractive to users of large in-memory databases such as SAP HANA.
"Combining the largest memory sizes available in the cloud with the agility and reliability of AWS, Amazon EC2 High Memory instances enable customers to scale their in-memory database deployments and seamlessly integrate them with the rest of AWS," Amazon said in a statement.
This came about, in Amazon's account of things, because its people noticed that fashion brand Uniqlo was running HANA on existing EC2 instances with just(!) 4TB of memory available. This was seemingly not enough, and so AWS decided to add on more memory than most consumer SSDs offer as storage.
"Amazon EC2 High Memory instances are available as bare metal instances on EC2 Dedicated Hosts ," according to AWS, which said they are powered by Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs.
Specifically, according to AWS, these are Xeon Platinum 8176M (Skylake) processors running at 2.1GHz (with Turbo Boost to 3.8GHz), and are available as EC2 Dedicated Hosts for launch within a new or existing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.
Google, of course, made a very showy punt for SAP HANA crowd two months ago, saying it could provide scalable cloud instances on the back of future Intel Optane DC persistent memory. The Register's Chris Mellor pointed out at the time that "general Optane DIMM use has to wait for Intel's Cascade Lake Xeons", adding: "Running SAP HANA workloads on early Cascade Lake Xeons with Optane DIMMs apparently reduces restart times from tens of minutes to tens of seconds."
For its part, Amazon promised "predictable" performance of large in-memory DBs on the same virtual private cloud where the connected business applications are running.
As with all AWS tweaks, the idea is to suck in ever more customers to Amazon's cloud, which is stomping all over the competition with what some analysts reckon is a near 50 per cent market share. ®


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On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff
THE EUROPEAN Union in Brussels, the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest court, and Germany’s Daimler-Benz are arguing about keeping cool. At the core of this are the EU’s stringent CO2 regulations and disagreements about the air-conditioning refrigerant HFO-1234y, shorthand name “Twelve-thirty-four.”
Check out “Glossary of Cool” (www.wp.me/p2ETap-gR) for background on this. An article in The New York Times, August 29, 2013, describes the latest European hassles (http://goo.gl/QAnnPL). An amplified summary follows.
Having lagged behind the U.S. and Japan for decades in regulating traditional automotive pollutants, the Europeans came on strong with anthropogenic climate change, CO2 and the automobile. Given today’s carbonaceous fuels, the EU’s automotive CO2 limits are equivalent to fuel-consumption regulations.
Beginning in 2012, each automaker had to post a new-car fleet average in the European market of no more than 130 gm CO2 /km. This target is equivalent to 43.5 mpg for gasoline vehicles; 49.0 for diesels (diesel fuel containing more carbon).
Fiat did best in 2012 with 118.2 gm CO2/km (an equivalent 47.8 mpg gasoline; 53.8 mpg diesel). Eight other automakers beat 130; the Euro market average was 132.3.
For 2020, the EU wants to tighten things to 90 gm CO2/km (gasoline: 63.5 mpg; diesel: 71.2 mpg). German automakers, already challenged with the 130 limit, seek weakening of the regulations.
The air-conditioning hassle is a byproduct of the overall CO2 limit. Beginning in 2013, the older a/c refrigerant R134a is banned in new-model vehicles (that is, carry-over designs can still use it). What’s more, any new refrigerant must have a “Global Warming Potential,” over a 100-year time horizon, of no greater than 150 times that of CO2. By contrast, R134a’s GWP is 1430. Twelve-thirty-four is only four times as potent as CO2; that is, its GWP is 4.
Daimler chose to continue using R134a in several of its models, including its A-Class, B-Class, CLA and SL. The French environment ministry responded in July of this year by blocking registration of these cars. Daimler-Benz countered by taking the ban to a higher authority, the French counterpart of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Daimler-Benz argued that Twelve-thirty-four was flammable in crash testing and, when ignited, produced hydrogen fluoride, a dangerous gas. The French Conseil d’Etat agreed by temporarily lifting the ban.
Only a few thousand cars are specifically affected. But long-term implications aren’t clear.
Twelve-thirty-four is already the refrigerant of choice in several U.S. cars, among them the Cadillac ATS and XTS. Is its flammability a concern? The refrigerant’s supplier, Honeywell International, dismissed Daimler’s claim back in July 2013. Honeywell markets Twelve-thirty-four as its Solstice brand; Dupont has an Opteon equivalent.
Daimler-Benz and Volkswagen have been concentrating their efforts on developing air-conditioning systems that use CO2 as the refrigerant. Of course, environmentalists like its GWP, by definition 1. But a/c specialists recognize that it’s not a particularly good refrigerant, requiring larger, more costly and less efficient systems.
It ain’t over. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2013


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Apple Ready To Rocket Higher From New Products
Maxwell is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
When it comes to game-changing ideas and must-have products, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is in a category of its own. I can think of no other company with such a dedicated and loyal base of customers. The company’s annual events are part rock concert, part revival meeting. The introduction of a new Apple product invariably leads to lines formed around the block to be one of the first to own the latest cool device. And the company lives up to the hype by creating innovative gadgets that seem to fill a demand that no one even realized was there.
Apple stock has been all over the news lately, with its shares topping $600 for the first time, and extending its lead over Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world. It overtook Google on a per-share basis recently, moving from $500 a share to over $600 in just 22 days. It is the first company since Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) in December of 1999 to achieve a $600 billion dollar market cap. As a side note, 13 years later Microsoft has a market cap of just $260 billion.
Apple also recently took on another accolade, as shares received an analyst price target of more than $1000 each within the coming year. At this valuation, Apple would become the first $1 trillion dollar company ever. Whether this can happen is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain; Apple keeps surprising everyone by continuously beating sales and revenue estimates. So where does the stock go from here? I believe it keeps going in the same direction it has been, from the lower left to the upper right.
The Case for Continued Growth
You may think that a company the size of Apple, with total sales of nearly $130 billion would find it hard to continue growing. Well, you would be wrong. In its most recent quarter, Apple grew Mac sales by 26%, while iPad sales grew by 111%. Perhaps the most astonishing was sales of iPhones, which grew by 128% to 37 million units, led by the new iPhone 4S. Apple more than doubled its profits in the first quarter of 2012 to $13.06 billion, from $6 billion in the year earlier period.
As the iPhone and iPad gain more traction with business users, replacing Research in Motion’s (RIMM) Blackberry devices for instance, sales could grow even more. On top of this, China is a huge potential market for these devices that has barely been tapped. Estimates are for close to 40 million iPhones to be sold in China this year, with a potential for more thant 150 million over the next few years.
And then there are new product cycles and upgrades of existing devices that will drive growth globally. A company grows its sales and revenue by continually making stuff that its customers want to buy. I believe no other company in history has been as adept at doing this as has Apple. The company seems to anticipate a trend before it takes off, and to make products and services that address this demand.
Finally, Apple has been rumored to be interested in a household appliance that would deliver TV and other entertainment media. It already has a set-top box called Apple TV, but it hasn’t gotten much traction as of yet. If the company does introduce an iTV-type device, and position it as innovative and cool as all of its other products, this could be the driver that takes the stock to $1,000 a share and beyond.
Apple currently has more than $100 billion cash on hand, with that number expected to hit nearly $140 billion by year’s end. At some point this huge amount of cash can become a liability to a company, as it is earning very little return. That’s why Apple has announced a plan to distribute some of it to shareholders, in the form of its first dividend ever. They’ve also announced a $10 billion stock repurchase plan that is designed to help offset dilution from employee stock issuance.
Apple’s iPad is the best-selling tablet on the market. Some are even calling it a laptop and PC replacement. iPad sales totaled 55 million last year, and Apple CEO Tim Cook has recently said that he expects sales to reach 325 million by 2015. Cook has also been quoted as saying, “We believe the tablet market will surpass the PC market in size. It’s just a matter of time.”
Apple is undoubtedly an aspirational brand. For one thing, there is the sheer appeal of its products to a wide range of users. This cult of cool has been arduously maintained within the corporate culture. Although co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is no longer at the helm, his legacy of delivering only the coolest devices that work flawlessly, has continued. It’s partly this commitment to the customer experience that gives Apple its edge.
When Steve Jobs passed away in October of 2011, there was legitimate concern that the innovation and passion the company was known for would end. While too little time has passed for this prediction to be disproved, it is worth considering as a potential investor. Steve Jobs was not only the figure-head, but the chief visionary behind many of Apple’s best-selling products.
Perhaps a more valid concern for investors may be whether or not market saturation is likely for the company. When the personal computer was first introduced, the market for it seemed infinite. Of course we know from flat PC sales over the past decade, this was not to be the case. New products and services aside, Apple may see a day when its growth comes strictly from product upgrades and replacements, in which case the high rates of growth (and the high multiple) will no longer hold.
Finally, there is a risk to Apple’s stock that may seem obscure to some investors. The subsidies that Apple has negotiated with U.S. carriers in order to compete on price with other smart-phone manufacturers will likely disappear over time. In countries where there are no carrier-provided subsidies, the iPhone sells for around $700. This can be compared to an Android phone that regularly sells for $200 in the same market. As the Android operating system gains in popularity and the device manufacturers continue to copy Apple’s innovative designs, the sky-high margins that Apple enjoys may be a thing of the past.
Anyone considering an investment in Apple stock will realize the incredible performance of the past decade. If you had purchased Apple ten years ago, you would have seen an increase of nearly 5,000% on your investment. It is highly unlikely (read impossible) for that type of growth in the future, however Apple continues to be an extraordinary stock for investors. With an average return of nearly 42% per year over the past decade, it may yet find a way to at least come close to those rewards for the next ten years.
The Motley Fool has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. StockCroc1 has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Halten Sie sich über die neuesten Informationen aus den Lieferketten auf dem Laufenden.
Since 2020, the world has been rocked by a series of terribly disruptive events. As global citizens, we are going through a world-wide pandemic, increasingly extreme weather, and war in Eastern Europe which has threatened lives and livelihoods of millions around the globe.
However, people persevere even in the face of daunting calamities. For businesses, it is important to keep the materials moving. In fact, keeping supply chains operational becomes more important than ever when we’re faced with a crisis. Building resiliency into your supply chain through efficient risk management, collaboration and transparency are vital when world events make things difficult. (Source: Mckinsey & Company)
Adding to the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government has moved to rationing electric power to its manufacturing sector as part of their “power rationing” propaganda. As a result, factories are closing in response to high energy prices, and the factories that remain in operation are working with a greatly reduced capacity.
Apart from this, China has implemented a zero-COVID policy to curb the spread of infection across their cities. This wartime model has been put in place across the entire country to limit mobility to and from all their cities, causing most non-essential services to close down. Manufacturers face a huge level of uncertainty from factories operating out of China as businesses and other day-to-day operations shut down.
Events have converged in what the New York Times labeled “The Great Supply Chain Disruption.” What we learn from the responses to these disruptions will determine how well we respond to the next ones. We believe there are some steps you can take to strengthen your supply chain to better weather the next global crisis.
Global brands have decided to diversify their sourcing locations to countries outside of China. Countries like India and Bangladesh are on top of the preferred list for brands establishing new sourcing centers. During the first quarter this year, China's sourcing share fell to just 47% of European or American buyers' procurement plans, down sharply from 60% in 2020. This is the lowest level in three years. (QIMA barometer Q2 2022)
As Edward Sweeny notes in his piece for the World Economic Forum, “uncertainty is a characteristic of the international business landscape.” While no one can possibly predict the future, supply chain managers can take certain steps to help avoid potential delays and shortages.
Some companies have turned to warehousing more goods as a solution. Amazon spent more than US$ 164 million on new warehouse space last year, for example. That kind of monumental investment isn’t feasible for most companies, however, and so alternative ways to pivot in the face of challenges are necessary.
Advanced planning can make transitions caused by challenges easier. The following outlines steps you can take today to improve your supply chain resiliency.
Companies used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to learn how to plan in ways they never had before. Advanced projections and ordering are the current strategies, and they are more important than ever. Planning ahead reduces the stress delays can exert on supplies. While we can’t always overcome shortages—as in the case of manufacturers who rely on some electronics that are in short supply—maintaining visibility throughout your network can help you identify and adjust for trends.
Understanding the actual situation in your suppliers’ facilities is a key factor for making good decisions at any time, but it’s especially important during times of uncertainty. Make sure supply chain representatives are in contact with the facilities you rely on for your company. Give them the tools necessary to get a true reading on what’s happening on the ground.
Suppliers are likely struggling to meet the demands of their consumers who are eager to put the world’s turbulence behind them. No doubt, some factories will begin rushing orders due to China’s limited working days, which will result in quality issues. Quality suffers most when things get hectic. Improving your supply chain visibility will help you monitor quality.
You should continue to insist on rigorous quality standards during the crisis by empowering your suppliers with a QC platform to conduct secure and more agile self-inspections that can help you work with more flexibility during disruptions. Using standardized processes and automated planning of the inspections can save up to 40% of the time used to manage quality. Lean on this expertise to help you mitigate any risk to your supply chain.
As the expert in supply chain visibility, QIMA is well-positioned to help you prepare for an uncertain future. Our new QMS, QIMAone, is the collaborative quality and compliance platform that connects your supply network with greater visibility and smarter control. Our software provides up-to-the-minute reporting, so you know the conditions inside your factories, even if you’re on the other side of the globe.
Based on millions of inspections and audits performed globally using QIMA’s technologies, we can provide you expert advise on how you can actually improve quality in a disrupted supply chain by using a digital platform like QIMAone.
Learn how QIMAone can be your partner, today and tomorrow. Book a consultation call and speak with one of our experts to hear how we can help you tackle your supply chain quality challenges: Contact Us.


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A now deleted video posted to PlayStation France’s YouTube account showcases the next Overwatch event – Insurrection.
Ahead of today’s reveal for the next big Overwatch event, images and details have steadily been leaking. Yesterday, a trailer posted by PlayStation France to YouTube showed off the new event, called Insurrection. The trailer has since been deleted, but you can still check out the video, via YouTuber Jeffrey Grubb, below:
Insurrection appears to be a new cooperative mode and comes complete with new skins, sprays, emotes and more – over 100 new items in all, according to the trailer.
We’re sure to be receiving more information when the event is officially unveiled later today, so be sure to check back for more information. Until then, have some pictures.


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The couple stepped out for the London premiere of Guy Ritchie's new series 'The Gentlemen'
Rocco Ritchie is a true gentleman!
The son of Madonna and Guy Ritchie stepped out for the London premiere of The Gentlemen with girlfriend Olivia Monjardin and the two looked impossibly glam.
Ritchie, 23, sported a classic black suit with a white button-down and patterned tie, while his girlfriend matched him in her own all-black look. She wore a low-cut black dress with lace detailing on the bodice, topped with a black blazer. Monjardin carried a black handbag to complete her look.
The red carpet premiere for Ritchie's dad's new TV project marked the couple's red carpet debut since being linked last fall. Though Ritchie largely keeps a low profile, he was seen in photos obtained by Daily Mail in November in Milan. The two had reportedly been spotted the first time the month before that, according to the outlet.
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The two also made an appearance just days ago at the F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at Bahrain International Circuit, where they posed for a few quick photos while taking in the race. Ritchie went for a decidedly retro vibe with his '70s-esque patterned shirt and jacket.
In September, Ritchie made a stylish sibling statement when he stepped out with sister Lourdes Leon at Paris Fashion Week for the Louis Vuitton show.
Madonna's two eldest children couldn't have possibly looked more chic while posing for photos at the fashion show.
They even coordinated their all-black looks, with Leon, 27, in a stretchy minidress with a knotted neckline and black strappy sandals. She had her hair styled in a sleek bun and accessorized with large hoop earrings.
Ritchie wore a black shirt and wide-leg trousers and topped the look with a chalk-striped dress coat that was tied at the waist. He completed his dapper ensemble with black pointy-toe shoes.
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A British woman has won a $10,000 (£6,250) iTunes gift card after the 10 billionth download from Apple’s App Store was made from her account.
Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent collected the top prize in the App Store Countdown to 10 Billion Apps promotion after one of her daughters downloaded the game Paper Glider.
Apple has set up a page on their website with a countdown ticker showing the number of apps downloaded as they neared the 10 billion mark. We predicted on Thursday that the 10 billionth app would be downloaded some time on Saturday afternoon, UK time – giving British app fans a good chance of claiming the $10,000 prize.
Ms Davis admitted she was unaware they had done it, so thought the phone call from Apple was someone playing a prank on her and refused to take it.
‘My daughters told me they had downloaded it and they knew there was a competition and that we may have won it,’ she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
‘I had that moment of blind panic but Apple kindly phoned me back and said I was a winner.’
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing, said the landmark download showed the App Store had ‘revolutionised’ the software market.
‘With more than 10 billion apps downloaded in just two-and-a-half years – a staggering seven billion apps in the last year alone – the App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams,’ he added.
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PUBG Mobile has been constantly rolling out new updates to gain more popularity among the mobile gaming community. The players are currently excited for the upcoming 0.18.0 update and the beginning of Season 13. As the new season is about to kick off, the company has announced a new Lucky Money Tree event to mark the end of the existing Season.
With the ongoing Lucky Money Tree event, PUBG Mobile is giving users a chance to win huge prizes including an iPhone 11 Pro and Apple AirPods. The event has already kicked off and it will be live until May 2.
This is not the first time we are seeing such great prizes on PUBG Mobile. Back in January, the company was giving away Apple AirPods, Gift Cards, Golden Helmet and more during its Prosperous Spring event.
Coming back to the ‘Lucky Money Tree’ event, the players will just need to shake the tree and earn prizes. However, the players will only get two chances every day. Upon winning, the winners will be rewarded with an Apple iPhone 11 Pro and two AirPods. Apart from the physical prizes, the players will also get a chance to win various in-game items.
To shake the Lucky Money Tree, the players just need to login to the game. In order to get the second chance of the day, the players will need to complete a mission of their choice. Every day, PUBG Mobile will display the list of the day’s winners on the Lucky Tree pop-up page. The page will also display the list of missions a player has to complete in order to get a chance to shake the tree.


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On Aug. 14, Frontal21, the flagship news show of German public broadcasting company ZDF ran a segment on Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. employees who have fallen victim to a variety of blood disorders, and the inaction of the world’s largest electronics maker.
The six-minute segment includes interviews of a SHARPS organizer, Samsung blood-disorder victims, their families and a Samsung executive.
In the interview, Kong Jeong-ok, the medical doctor with SHARPS, said of the Samsung victims: “They do not want money. They want justice.”
Han Hye-kyoung, a former Samsung worker, now partially paralyzed and verbally impaired after brain tumors, stammered through her testimony of how she was continually exposed to chemicals while working at Samsung.
In 2011, Samsung commissioned Environ International, the U.S. environmental and workplace safety consultancy that frequently represents the tobacco industry, to conduct a study of workplace exposure control measures. Without disclosing the data it used in the study, the consultancy concluded that there is non-causality between blood-disorder clusters at Samsung and its working conditions.
Samsung’s denial of the existence of cancer clusters at its semiconductor and LCD factories continues unabated.
When asked by Frontal21 whether Samsung could influence or deceive Environ, Kim Soo-geun, director of Samsung Health Research Institute, the electronics maker’s safety research arm, answered, “I cannot speak any foreign languages. You have to speak really good English to be able to understand American scientists and to influence them.”
Kim’s petulance is typical of Samsung in handling labor and CSR issues.
The following is the English translation of a Web summary of the Frontal21 report [all brackets and Web links are added]:
Dying After Working At Samsung
South Korea’s Conglomerate Refuses to Take Responsibility
Samsung Group of South Korea is facing serious allegations: its former employees have died after growing ill while working at Samsung. The causes of their deaths are due to carcinogenic chemicals, to which the victims became exposed while employed at Samsung factories.
The accusations are leveled by SHARPS, the advocacy group for the victims. The lack of safety meant that some 150 former employees, most of them at a young age, were affected by leukemia, lymphoma or multiple sclerosis. And 56 died prematurely. According to SHARPS, many of them were employed at semiconductor factories and others at LCD labs. For many years, the victims and their bereaved families have been calling on Samsung to admit that the sicknesses were work-related.
In an interview with Frontal21, Kim Soo-Geun, director of Samsung Health Research Institute, denies any such connections. He said, “Carcinogens such as benzene are unlikely to be a part of [semiconductor] production.” His remarks contradicted the findings of an independent study by Seoul National University scientists. “Benzene was detected at Samsung. What is also missing [at Samsung] is professional management, which would have enabled Samsung to measure chemicals used in the supply chain,” said [Seoul National University] professor Park Do-myung in an interview with Frontal21.
Samsung Does Not Want To Know
Last year, the Seoul administrative court ruled in favor of [a request for workers compensation by] the father of Hwang Yumi, a Samsung worker who died at the age of 21 of leukemia. “She became sick because she was exposed to various toxic chemical while on her job,” the court said. However, Samsung does not want to know [about it]. “Cancer is a frequent disease, with or without specific triggers,” said director Kim in the interview. Why [should] I believe this cancer could not be avoided?”
In 2011, Samsung Group posted 16 billion euros in earnings. Even in Germany, telephones, TVs and other electronic devices from Samsung are very popular. According to industrial surveys, Samsung smartphones are now more popular than Apple’s iPhone. Almost 25 percent of smartphone users have Samsung smartphones.


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Cyber Monday and Black Friday have long been make-or-break days of the year for retailers. They have recently become important to publishers selling subscriptions, and many of them found success this year by offering major deals.
On Cyber Monday, The Wall Street Journal and Wired both recorded the biggest single day of subscription sales in their histories. On Black Friday, Barron’s experienced the same. And New York magazine, which began offering promotions on Friday, logged its best four-day sales stretch ever.
It was a good time for readers to sign up for publications on the cheap: New York offered a 60% price cut on a yearlong subscription. The Wall Street Journal gave readers two months of unlimited digital access for $1; a month of digital access normally runs $35. Quartz offered 50% off to subscribers, as did The Information.
“The assumption is that you’re bringing in low-value customers that are only attracted to the price,” said Jason Sylva, gm of consumer revenue for New York magazine. “That’s something that I’m sure keeps everyone in this business up at night: Are you doing long-term damage to the brand by relying too much on this tactic?”
For publishers whose subscription products are newer, the big discounts help them combat larger e-commerce trends that are not in their favor. As e-commerce has turned into an integral part of the holiday shopping season, larger retailers have benefited more than smaller ones. E-commerce companies with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion have so far this year found their holiday season revenues increase at a rate more than double (or 71%) that of e-commerce companies with annual revenues less than $50 million (just 32%), according to Adobe’s calculations.
As the largest players have logged gains, the actual discounts offered on Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become more modest. Adobe’s analysis found, for example, that in the categories with the biggest discounts such as toys, clothing or televisions, retailers offered savings of about 20%. By comparison, many publishers’ discounts were much steeper.
“When you’re new, you have to come out with something that’ll get noticed,” Sylva said. “The best way to get attention is with an eye-popping sale.”
Not every publisher decided to go discount happy on the two special shopping dates. The Daily Beast, which this year drastically changed the pricing strategy for its membership program Beast Inside, opted to not offer anything beyond its standard discount. Mary Cullen, the Daily Beast’s marketing director for memberships, said her company’s research found that deeper discounts tend to result in higher churn. Consequently, the news publisher avoided any further price cuts.
But even though Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) discounts are available to any consumer, most of the publishers that offered them made sure to target prospects who had shown engagement ahead of the offer launch. Some publishers credited their gains on the work that they did ahead of the two mega shopping days.
Karl Wells, the Journal’s gm of membership, subscription sales and marketing, pointed to his publication’s brand campaign that ran at the beginning of November, as well as a three-day “open house,” when the Journal dropped its paywall entirely.
Those two elements, he said, brought in a large number of new readers and enabled the Journal’s data science team to identify a large pool of prospects who might be amenable to a Black Friday deal. “Suddenly, four weeks out, you’re going, ‘We’ve got a big pool of people who aren’t ready to pay for us yet but who are interested,’” Wells said. “On the Wednesday of Black Friday week, we knew we were going to have a really good weekend.”
While most publishers that offered discounts put the offers in front of readers in as many places as possible, the channels that brought the most conversions differed among the news providers. For New York magazine, Instagram ads delivered the greatest number of subscribers over the weekend. For The Wall Street Journal, site visitors hitting the paywall — which was set to be more easily triggered — delivered the greatest impact, Wells said.
While reducing his product’s price by more than half might seem risky, Sylva perceives it as a way to tap into a customer’s current mindset, he said. “Whatever state of mind that person’s in, we try to match that with the pricing,” Sylva explained. “At a time when we’ve seen that customers are really taking that moment to buy a bunch of stuff, the currency in that moment isn’t value; it tends to be price-led.”
An earlier version of this story said The Wall Street Journal had its best subscription sales day on Black Friday, rather than Cyber Monday. Barron’s best day was on Black Friday.
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Posted on 22 April 2022
Cyber Risk: Why Investors Should Care About Cyber Security
A company’s cyber preparedness is a crucial consideration in any investor’s investment decision. It is a business risk that you cannot afford to ignore, says Arno Robbertse, Chief Executive Officer at ITC Secure.
As we have all witnessed, the pandemic pushed organisations over the technology tipping point, forcing companies to react quickly and accelerate adoption of new technologies and ways of working at record speed – transforming the business landscape forever.
The implementation of remote working and collaboration capabilities was accelerated by 43 times, compared to estimates before the crisis according to a global survey of executives conducted by McKinsey. Similarly, digitisation of customer and supply chain interactions, and of internal operations, accelerated by three to four years in a matter of months.
While this enabled organisations to rapidly introduce new business models and reach customers in new ways, this shift also widened the threat landscape further, leaving businesses exposed to the growing complexity in cyber security. The new security perimeter and the ever expanding cyber-attack surfaces have led to a surge of sophisticated cyber attacks, with top concerns including cyberterrorism, internal threats, and industrial espionage.
Cyber crime can have a considerable impact on financial companies
Prominent data breaches have served to shine a light on the scale of potential impact on a company. According to a recent global study, the average cost of a data breach has now reached $4.24 million in comparison to $3.86 million in the previous year.
We must also not forget that there is reputational damage associated with cyber security attacks. According to research by HSBC, it can take an average of two years for a business’s reputation to recover after a data breach is uncovered. Furthermore, share prices of companies affected have been shown to underperform by 15.6% in the three years following an attack.
Additionally, regulation, including legislation such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), is increasingly making cyber security mandatory. Approximately 60 countries have data and privacy rules on the books and 14 additional states in the US are considering similar measures – further establishing cyber security health as a global business priority.
As a result, there is a growing trend that sees investors place increased priority on cyber security within their investment decisions and portfolio companies as part of how they are evaluated – a requirement that is as vital as ensuring the correct foundations are in place for accounting, supply chains or customer services.
Adopting a holistic approach
The growing impact of cyber attacks – coupled with the increased public and regulatory scrutiny of a company’s cyber security practices further asserts the need to systematically integrate cyber due diligence in the investment lifecycle.
By holistically assessing the cyber health associated with every investment – from pre-acquisition decision-making to post-acquisition portfolio management through to post-breach investigative and risk management support – investors will be able to stay ahead of the curve and protect both the value and the brand of their companies.
Whilst undergoing due diligence, it is also important to think seriously about how changes to working and operational models prompted by the pandemic have affected the cyber security of the company. With the rapid shift to new ways of working, the security perimeter is no longer confined to a company’s network. In a cloud native world, identity is the new perimeter, which brings about a new way of thinking and measures to manage risk.
Finally, investors need to be mindful not just in terms of their investment decisions and the cyber health of portfolio companies – but also themselves. Considering the regular involvement with third parties and large quantities of capital involved, investment firms themselves can be prime targets for sophisticated cyber attacks such as targeted phishing, spoofing and digital impersonation, where large amounts of funds could be funnelled off during the course of a complex deal. This makes your own cyber security an area that cannot be ignored.
This article was originally published in the Sensus Magazine. Click the image to flip through our most recent issue or browse through our previous editions of the magazine.
Chief Information Security Officer