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What a difference twelve months makes? This time one year ago, we were exploring the ‘uncertain outlook’ for electric mobility in South Africa. Trying to remain positive but mostly spouting all the tropes about a lack of charging infrastructure, government taxation (a staggering 45% all told on EVs) and Eskom’s infamously unstable power supply. These raised more questions than they answered, positing the most important one of them all, despite the hype, when was the long-awaited paradigm shift to electric actually going to happen?
Fast forward to 2019 and like so many things in this world, there may only be a trickle of electrified vehicles at the moment, but the trickle is poised to burst into flood. This year I’ve personally driven two of latest clean-sheet EVs – Jaguar’s I-Pace and Audi’s e-tron – and I can tell you that despite one or two foibles, they do work, they do deliver 400 km+ range per charge in an entirely representative driving manner, and they are blazing a trail that doesn’t rely on the burning of long-dead dinosaur food. Knock them all you want, the one thing traditional carmakers are good at is ensuring technology filters down to every element of the business so a return on investment can be realised. This, in part, means improved battery capacity and electric motors will find their way into hybrid vehicles, too.
In the short term it is dual-energy vehicles that are poised to gain in popularity amidst this resurgence in eco-mobility. The fallout from #dieselgate continues unabated with Porsche and now Nissan, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler saying they’re phasing out diesel combustion from their ranges altogether. In their place, it’s estimated that 60 million electrified cars will have their skinny tyres on the roads by 2040. As a result, where once you only had Toyota/Lexus monopolising with the temerity of its mild-hybrid system (one that only harvests energy while braking and coasting), nowadays many major luxury manufacturers offer a plug-in hybrid-electric (PHEV) derivative: the Volvo XC90 Twin Engine, BMW’s 740e eDrive limousine and the e-hybrid Porsche Panamera and Cayenne. The latest to join the fray this year is Land Rover with the P400e Range Rover and Range Rover Sport. Both are big, cossetting, ultra-luxurious SUVs, however, their PHEV drivetrains can be topped up through a conventional wall socket, so they’ll deliver 51 km of pure EV mileage off a full battery before you even tap into your fuel reserves. I have some experience with this P400e drivetrain and the refinement and efficiency is second to none.
This begs the question why Toyota never sought to introduce PHEVs of its popular Prius in SA. In many ways this lost Toyota the initiative it had fought so hard to achieve and allowed the competition to leapfrog it in terms of hybrid efficacy. Instead, the Japanese carmaker has taken an unprecedented step in the war on climate change by releasing tens of thousands of patents royalty-free. ‘There’s a high volume of enquiries about our vehicle electrification systems from companies that recognise a need to popularise hybrid and electric technologies, we believe that now is the time for cooperation,’ says Shigeki Terashi, Toyota Motor Corporation Executive Vice President.
Toyota, like so many carmakers, sees the popularity of electrified vehicles only accelerating in the next ten years and it hopes to be a key player in helping meet the challenge of climate change. Along with the patents, Toyota will provide technical support to manufacturers that purchase its electrification components such as motors, batteries and control units, for a fee of course. Putting aside the piousness of combating climate change for just a moment, there’s no denying that manufacturers see a massive pot of gold at the end of this seemingly ever-arcing eco rainbow – one that’s grown exponentially over the last decade (the world’s electrified carpark sat at 3.5 million in 2018) – while also acknowledging they face the risk of being left behind if they don’t take up the EV battle. If current estimates prove accurate, 20 new brands and more than 100 new EVs will be on the road by 2022. ‘Simply put, almost all new cars from Europe and Japan will have a heavy EV reliance built into them, and while we are lagging behind, if we take action now, South Africa can mature into an EV-ready market in the next five years,’ says Brian Hastie, Electrification Team Leader for Jaguar Land Rover SA.
This is a sentiment shared by SA power utilities, Eskom, which this year met with major EV players to unlock the potential zero-emissions mobility locally. Being the countries primary electricity supplier, it identified an objective to craft special tariffs for EV owners to charge their vehicles at home during off-peak times, helping to flatten demand patterns outside of peak periods and ensure affordable and reliable power. It added that it’s well advanced in research on photovoltaic and battery storage options for the future and acknowledged that while it is true that South Africa has major income streams related to fossil fuels, electric vehicles will be the transport medium of the future and SA needs to be part of the movement or risk massive losses if it’s not geared up for it.
Positive talk it may be but it still doesn’t excuse the fact that, up to this point, there’s been precious little government support for electric vehicles in SA. In regions where sustainable mobility has thrived, there’s been an effective combination of three factors: innovative partnership, forward-thinking legislation and, most crucially, customer demand. Could it be that the success of SA’s EV strategy hinges on an affordable electric family car? Volkswagen, the number one seller of passenger cars locally, will soon offer an e-Golf in Europe that costs the same, goes as far and as fast as a regular TSI Golf – the exact vehicle to reassure the EV sceptics. However, according to Volkswagen Marketing and Communications Manager, Meredith Kelly, ‘There’s no market for e-Golf in South Africa at the moment.’
Despite this blinkered view, all the major carmakers are taking to the zero-emissions game; less so with a sense of reluctant obligation, more so with genuine passion. They understand that forming strategic partnerships and refining their own electric mastery now, will future-proof their business for decades to come. Investing in advanced engineering is one thing, but finding forward-thinking leadership to implement a convincing EV switch is where the responsibility now lies. One thing’s for certain, over the past twelve months, the mobility landscape has certainly changed – the once-calm waters of electric mobility are no longer.
Going electric means never having to visit a petrol forecourt again
How’s that going to work then? Well, ideally you should top-up your EV overnight at the most affordable tariff. When you do require a public charging point, you’ll be able to monitor the charge and range status via a smartphone app even when you’re not in the car. Apps like BMW’s i ConnectedDrive even offer a navigation service that recommends the most efficient route past the brand’s 57 ChargeNow stations (five DC fast chargers at BMW dealerships allow for charging from 0 to 80% in just 45 minutes). All are equipped with generators or solar panels to provide power in the event of a loss of electricity supply, aka, load shedding.
How much will I save by going electric?
For its new I-Pace, Jaguar envisions mostly home charging, like you would your cellphone overnight while you’re asleep. Home charger installation costs R30 000 and the firm claims it’ll cost you on average R2 per kWh (electricity tariffs fluctuate throughout the day). If you’re averaging 100 km per day (3 000 km per month) this works out to roughly two-thirds off the running cost of an equivalent internal-combustion vehicle – approximately R4 700 in fuel versus R1 800 in electricity. The speed and convenience of public DC charging will come at a premium – R60 per 100 km for public charging vs R40 per 100 km for home charging (and R120 per 100 km for an internal-combustion vehicle). Jaguar is well on the way to completing its R30-million ‘Jaguar Powerway,’ the pioneering initiative is comprised of 52 charging stations along the N1, N2 and N3, making it possible to travel long distances with zero range anxiety.


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I do everything that I can to have to stay out of a Walmart, it almost makes me sick to go into one.
It used to be that every store in every town in the United States had its own personality and that you felt like you were at home.
Now, Walmart has taken over and you can’t go anywhere where it seems like people know you. That’s just the customer service side of things.
Politically, they have gone out of their way to back liberal causes for a long time now, but it seems like this time they have universally gone too damn far.
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley got into what DailyBoulder calls “a war of words with Wal-Mart” because the retail megalith called him a “sore loser,” for announcing his intention to challenge Joe Biden’s electoral piracy and stand up for the Constitutional rule of law.
Somewhere around 75 million Americans took that as a slap in the face and now that they know the retail giant sides with the radical left you can bet they will show the displeasure with their dollars.
Wal-Mart left leaning bias crystal clear
January 6 is expected to be a day of reckoning for the Deep State. That’s when the electoral ballots, for all seven states where fraud evidence is well documented, might be tossed in the trash. Wal-Mart just made it crystal clear how far left they lean.
Following Hawley’s announcement that he will second the House objection to the fraudulent results on Wednesday, their Twitter account lashed out, “Go ahead. Get your 2 hour debate. #soreloser.” After severe blowback from the right, they deleted it.
Senator Hawley managed to grab a screenshot before it was scrubbed and responded to the “insulting condescension.” That two hour debate could be the most important two hour debate in the 247 year history of Congress.
“Now that you’ve insulted 75 million Americans, will you at least apologize for using slave labor?” Hawley tapped out. “Or maybe you’d like to apologize for the pathetic wages you pay your workers as you drive mom and pop stores out of business.” He apparently has an ax to grind about Wal-Mart and their in-store economics.
The bigwigs in Arkansas quickly threw the “slave labor” in their office under the bus. Wal-Mart officially apologized for the earlier tweet which was “mistakenly posted by a member of our social media team.”

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Toyota brings fuel cell vehicles into spotlight
December 6, 2015 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin
Toyota's introduction of the Mirai -- the automaker's first production-level fuel cell car -- has thrust fuel cell vehicles (FCV) back into the spotlight.
The Mirai joins Hyundai's fuel cell-powered Tucson as the only commercially available fuel cell cars on the market today.
While the performance of FCVs makes them ready for commercial launch, the industry is still focused on the two key requirements for larger-scale market introduction: driving down vehicle costs to be competitive with battery and hybrid vehicle technology, and developing the hydrogen infrastructure necessary to fuel the vehicles.
However, Navigant Research predicts annual sales of FCVs will exceed 228,000 by 2024.
"Commercial FCVs are finally available to drivers in select markets, with early indications of real customer interest and signs that manufacturers are getting serious about pricing FCVs to compete at the premium-vehicle level," said Lisa Jerram, principal research analyst with Navigant Research. "Automakers serious about fuel cell technology are expected to tackle the fueling infrastructure problem head on, with much needed investments in station buildout."
Until the infrastructure is available, the market for FCVs is expected to remain supply-constrained, with vehicle production at low levels, according to Navigant. To facilitate the creation of FCV infrastructure, automakers are collaborating with new partners in retail fueling and hydrogen supply.
Fuel cell buses face a less daunting infrastructure challenge since buses can utilize a central fueling facility, according to Navigant; however, this application is also focused on cost reduction. For both the fuel cell car and fuel cell bus markets, governments continue to be a key factor as they spur the deployment of lower emissions technologies and fund the buildout of hydrogen stations.
Meanwhile, FCVs must also compete with battery electric vehicles (BEV) -- which have been available as commercial products since 2010 -- and zero emissions vehicles (ZEV), Navigant notes.
© 2015 FierceMarkets, a division of Questex, LLC. All rights reserved.


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Coronavirus in Hertfordshire: Trading Standards crackdown on businesses breaching lockdown
- Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
County Trading Standards officers are cracking down on businesses flouting the rules during the coronavirus lockdown.
They have been working to uphold emergency legislation dictating that non-essential businesses should temporarily cease trading.
And officers are also investigating reports that some retailers are charging excessing prices for key products such as toilet roll, hand sanitisers and disinfectants.
The county council’s Trading Standards team is working with district and borough council Environmental Health Services to ensure non-essential traders remain closed.
The partnership will also be monitoring businesses who have been asked to significantly modify their operations in order to remain trading.
Cabinet Member for community safety at Hertfordshire County Council, Terry Hone, said: “In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important that we all work together to keep vulnerable people safe. Businesses that have been judged to be ‘non-essential’ at this time have been asked to close in order to protect both staff and customers.
“Our Trading Standards team will be working together with district and borough councils to ensure the only businesses open for trading are those who have been given clearance to do so.
“We appreciate this is a difficult time for businesses in Hertfordshire. If you run a business in the county, we encourage you to visit our website for advice and support: https://bit.ly/covidbusinessadvice”
- 1 City centre Poundland store could be demolished and rebuilt
- 2 10 filming locations of new Netflix series Stay Close
- 3 Ricky Gervais' Netflix series After Life filmed in Hertfordshire
- 4 Property Spotlight: A family home in Harpenden's West Common
- 5 London Colney children will be going nuts for this new Scouts group
- 6 St Albans recycling heroes raise £28K for hospice
- 7 Obituary: Don Francis, former St Albans City and St Albans Sunday League star
- 8 Seven men arrested on suspicion of St Albans burglary
- 9 Primary school rated 'Good' in latest Ofsted report
- 10 Video shows thief stealing parcel from St Albans home doorstep
Any members of the public who have concerns that a business which should be closed is continuing to trade, or to report excessing pricing, should call 01992 555204 or email firstname.lastname@example.org
A definitive list of premises affected by the emergency legislation is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close-guidance


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A hairdresser has taken to TikTok to tell us all that we’ve been washing our hair wrong and missing out an essential step – as you’re supposed to do two rounds with shampoo.
Amy shared a tutorial online, under the username @amy.does.some.hair, saying there is definitely a ‘correct’ way to keep your hair fresh and clean.
She said the first step is to get your hair nice and wet, then run shampoo all through, including your hairline and nape, before rinsing your hair.
Then, she said it is essential to shampoo your hair once more – but this time focus on your scalp and let the rest of the suds pass gently through your hair.
In the clip, Amy said: “Thoroughly wet your hair, spread the shampoo over your hands and evenly distribute the shampoo all over your scalp.
“Don’t miss your hairline or nape.”
She then says you have to shampoo your scalp, then rinse, then add conditioner – which should be applied to the ends of your hair, avoiding the roots, and should be left to soak.
Amy’s video has so far been viewed over one million times, and has received a flurry of comments from people who were supportive of the technique.
One wrote: “It’s always a good tip to gently squeeze the excess water out your hair before applying conditioner so it’s not diluted completely by the wet hair.”
While another said: “I understand why but am no less horrified.”
And a third added: “What, shampoo twice?!”
“So I was curious and tried this,” a fourth user said. “Now my hair is super soft and feels cleaner. Like, excuse me, what?”


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BT are set to make their return to the mobile phone business, marking their first dalliance in the business since the days of BT cellnet. The deal was originally announced back in May, when the company made public their intention to return to the consumer mobile phone market. In order to achieve this goal, BT have announced a partnership with Everything Everywhere (EE), the somewhat beleaguered amalgamation of the old Orange and T-Mobile networks. The terms of this arrangement mean that EE will provide BT with the network infrastructure, including 4G – the super-fast connection that EE debuted in the UK – allowing BT to push this service on as a white label reseller.
Its understood that BT have struck an exclusive deal with EE, meaning that BT will be the only company allowed to make use of the extensive EE network. This effectively blocks off other competitors from taking a similar path to market, and as such allows BT to be the only company who can get into bed with one of the UK’s largest phone operators. As of yet, we understand, the contract remains unsigned, although sources indicate that this will change over the next few weeks.
BT’s main interest is tied to their Wi-Fi platform. The company bet big on broadband and internet services when they took on the Premier League football package. This is intended to be the company’s trojan horse, allowing them to leverage the UK consumer market towards BT Infinity broadband. The new deal with EE will make it easier for BT to tag 4G connectivity onto this package, as well as opening up the possibility that BT will launch their own branded phone network in 2014.
We expect the focus will remain targeted on providing consumers as well as business users with better ‘on the go’ connectivity though. BT recently stressed the importance of their Wi-Fi scheme to the company, stating that this is something that they “plan to build on” (BT CEO, Ian Livingston).
As of yet, no details have emerged over the business model and costing of this deal. On the surface of it, a new market entrant with deep pockets is the last thing that EE needs to encourage, whether or not that market entrant is built on their technology. BT have shown a new willingness to spend cash over the past year, and this is a competitive threat to EE. EE put their bags into the 4G basket, bidding to win exclusivity in the UK for the new superfast connectivity. This exclusivity, which was heavily promoted with large-scale ad campaigns, has now ended. The company no longer have 4G as their distinctive USP, and its widely accepted that they failed to capitalise on this opportunity.
We’ll keep you posted about new developments as they emerge.


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By Kritika Arora
With the government’s move to levy 5% of goods and services tax (GST) on unbranded packaged products, competition has become tougher for the unbranded food products retailers who may further lose their market share to bigger branded players.
Almost 70-75% of consumers buy unbranded packaged staples like flour, rice and pulses, but with the implementation of 5% GST on these items, traders and retailers expect prices for these products to go up by 5-10% going ahead, which in turn would lessen the competitiveness of unbranded players in the market.
“Overall impact on prices for consumers would be higher than 5% because to maintain it all levels and maintaining accounts would increase the overheads,” said Shankar Thakkar of Confederation of All India Traders.
Similarly, a Mumbai-based retailer who sells unbranded wheat flour, pulses, and spices said while the impact could take 2-3 months to reflect on the ground, for customers, prices may move up by 5-10% as prices along the value chain would also increase.
The Union government on July 18, notified that a clutch of unbranded prepackaged and labelled food items like curd, lassi, buttermilk, paneer, honey, makhana, wheat, rice and puffed rice will now attract 5% GST.
Experts say that the move could accelerate branded product consumption. “We have been seeing a shift towards branded products every year, for instance in the case of rice, there has been a 5% shift in consumption from unbranded to branded in the last 3-5 years, and now it will be 7% and upwards in the next few years,” said Akshay D’ Souza, chief of growth and insights at Bizom.
Similarly, for atta, with Parle Products and other big firms entering the space, there is a definite possibility of their share increasing rapidly as the availability of packaged atta improves significantly, added D’ Souza.
Currently, branded wheat constitutes around 17-19% of overall wheat consumption in the country.
However, economists point out that the larger section of people may start buying loose products instead and only marginal may shift to branded.
Branded products come at a premium of 15-20% as compared to unbranded ones. The levy of 5% GST on labelled items might bridge the gap between branded and unbranded products but if the price differential remains significant, one may tend to migrate towards lose products, said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda.
While many branded players have rejoiced at the government’s move saying that now many shopkeepers will come under the GST bracket unlike before, they are more concerned about the implementation of the same.
Krishna Mohan Nyayapati, director of Emami Agrotech, said: “It is difficult to comprehend how it will be implemented because small retailers are the ones who sell maximum unbranded packaged food and many of them buy in bulk and sell in small packs or many are not registered. But overall it is a good move to get small retailers under the tax regime.”
He added that overall it is a good move for the industry as overall commodity market prices have started to come down and hence the increase in prices through the levy of 5% GST may be negated in absolute terms.


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2,000 Zypp Electric two-wheelers will be integrated onto Battery Smart’s network and riders will have access to over 175 swap stations across the Delhi-NCR region
Battery Smart, an electric vehicle battery-swapping service provider, on Tuesday said it has partnered with shared electric mobility start-up Zypp Electric for integration of the latter’s electric two-wheelers into its network.
Under the partnership, 2,000 Zypp Electric two-wheelers will be integrated onto Battery Smart’s network and riders will have access to over 175 swap stations across the Delhi-NCR region, the company said in a statement.
A pilot of 200 vehicles is already underway, it added.
“Our partnership with Zypp Electric adds a large base of commercial two-wheelers and helps us improve the utilisation of our growing network,” Battery Smart co-founder Pulkit Khurana said.
Khurana added that the company’s network for battery swapping helps mitigate the fear of range anxiety typically associated with electric vehicles (EVs), especially for the logistics segment.
Battery Smart claims that it has completed seven lakh swaps and currently services over 2,500 electric two- and three-wheelers daily. It aims to provide EV drivers access to two-minute swaps within a one-km radius with zero wait time.
Zypp Electric co-founder and CEO Akash Gupta said, “Having access to the largest network of battery swapping in the country helps our drivers be on the road for longer durations. The partnership with Battery Smart also allows us to remain asset-light while expanding our fleet numbers further, without incurring a large CAPEX associated with the batteries and stations.”
Source: Business World


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The August issue of Money is on sale now. From how to boost your super by tens of thousands of dollars to tips for maximising credit card rewards, here’s what you can expect.
Need to borrow cash in the short term? The good news is, we’re now spoilt for options. But which is best for avoiding steep interest rates and fees?
Tempting as it might be to blow your tax refund on a new TV or holiday, here are five things you can do that will see you reap financial rewards for years.
In the new era of seemingly responsible lending, all four big banks are offering “low rate” cards, but are they the best?
Tighter lending restrictions and increased pressure on banks from the royal commission mean it’s getting tougher to get a loan. So what are lenders looking for when they review a loan application?
A few years ago I found myself with a student loan, car loan and HECS debt, and in urgent need of money to pay a large bill. I decided then to start making some changes.
Australia’s credit reporting system is changing. Here’s what you need to know about comprehensive credit reporting.
In 2016 Wesfarmers announced that it had partnered with Citi for the distribution of Coles credit cards. Now we know just what that will mean for consumers.


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Watch Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 5 online via TV Fanatic with over 2 options to watch the Game of Thrones S2E5 full episode. Affiliates with free and paid streaming include Amazon and iTunes.
We witness the conclusion of the Baratheon rivalry on Game of Thrones this week, while Tyrion learns of a secret weapon at King's Landing.


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Stick to Our Small-Cap Strategy to Earn Optimal Returns in 2023
Many small company stocks continue to be attractive for investors seeking total return.
More than a few companies followed in the SmallCap Informer continue to report quarterly results that mention both the impact of higher costs on their businesses and how they were able to adjust pricing in order to offset expenses. These companies then go on to report profits that are better than ever.
The experiences of these companies reflect the nuances of economic indicators released since the start of the year that show, at best, modest strength in the U.S. economy, and, at worst, minor downturns in some segments.
Perhaps most significantly, GDP rose 2.9% in the quarter, better than expected, and shutting down the storyline that the U.S. had entered a recession in 2022.
Core inflation rose in December at just 4.4%, the smallest annual increase since October 2021. Most tellingly, inflation pressures shifted from goods to services as the economy presses towards a state of equilibrium.
Personal income in the month modestly increased but consumer spending also dropped just as modestly, perhaps due to the cumulative effect of higher prices (and negative news reports).
The heated labor market cooled significantly as well, with new unemployment claims falling much more than expected. News of layoffs from high-profile global businesses may make for flashy headlines, but there is ample evidence that skilled tech workers will be able to quickly find new jobs in the vacancies that currently exist across many industries.
In the midst of the economic news maelstrom and the realignment of many mega-cap tech companies, it is more important to remember that a bottom-up investing style does not depend on monetary forecasts or broad predictions about future conditions for business. Individual companies react differently in different economic environments, giving individual investors the opportunity to uncover value when the rest of the market is panicking.
So it is with the two companies we cover in detail in this issue of the SmallCap Informer. Our first pick is new to coverage. Once again, we look to the underpinnings of the American economy for “companies behind the companies”—little-known names that provide materials and services to more consumer-facing businesses. Our selection has a long track record, solid financials, and a positive outlook, together creating a good formulation for investing success.
Our second recommendation is a past SCI pick has delivered fundamental success since we began covering it, but its share price remains stubbornly depressed. If fundamentals turn out as expected, the upside will be considerable.
As always, stay the course!
- DOUG GERLACH
Read Doug's complete commentary and profiles of two recommended small company stocks in the February 2023 issue of the SmallCap Informer stock newsletter.
Not a subscriber? Subscribe to the SmallCap Informer and get monthly small company stock recommendations and updated buy/sell prices for each of the 48 high-quality small company stocks currently covered in the newsletter.


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Amazon enters the home Wi-Fi business by acquiring eero -- but why?
Jeff Bezos may have his hands full with a pending divorce and alleged blackmail, but that is not going to slow Amazon down. Today, the popular retailer and Echo-maker announces a very intriguing acquisition. Surprisingly, Amazon will be buying eero for an undisclosed sum of money.
Not familiar with that company? That's not surprising. While eero is fairly popular with in-the-know consumers, it is not exactly a household name. Just know eero makes well-received mesh systems -- essentially a router and a series of access points that work together for superior coverage. But really, the company Amazon is acquiring isn't that important. The real story is that Amazon sees value in entering the home network business. Why is that so significant? Well, there are obvious privacy concerns -- will Amazon use these devices to track/log/monetize user traffic?
It is easy to be suspicious, as it is sort of an odd business for Amazon to enter. After all, it is a fairly crowded market that consumers aren't particularly passionate about. People buy a router, stick it somewhere and forget about it. On the surface, it doesn't seem particularly lucrative for a company the size of Amazon. Hell, even Apple abandoned the router business! Not to mention, many ISPs are providing router/modem combo units nowadays, which makes such a purchase sort of unnecessary. Amazon and eero representatives shed some light below.
"From the beginning, eero's mission has been to make the technology in homes just work. We started with WiFi because it’s the foundation of the modern home. Every customer deserves reliable and secure WiFi in every room. By joining the Amazon family, we're excited to learn from and work closely with a team that is defining the future of the home, accelerate our mission, and bring eero systems to more customers around the globe," says Nick Weaver, Co-Founder and CEO, eero.
Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices and Services shares, "We are incredibly impressed with the eero team and how quickly they invented a WiFi solution that makes connected devices just work. We have a shared vision that the smart home experience can get even easier, and we’re committed to continue innovating on behalf of customers."
While both sides of the deal are saying the right things, I am dubious that eero will be able to continue as it is. I fully expect [amazon_textlink asin='B07JF6SKRW' text='eero' template='ProductLink' store='betanews02-20' marketplace='US' link_id='c99899f5-bde1-47fb-bbaa-bfb17dd8886a'] technology to be combined with Alexa for an unholy matrimony that consumers simply don't want or need. Hell, I can envision a Swiss-army-like Fire TV/Router/Echo device that aims to lock users into Amazon's world. I wonder how other router-makers, such a NETGEAR and TP-Link, for instance, will appreciate competing with Amazon -- a retailer whose site also sells their products.
So, should current eero owners worry about this acquisition? Probably not. I don't expect Amazon to interfere with existing hardware. Consumers considering future Amazon-made routers or mesh systems, however, should absolutely be vigilant about privacy policies and terms and conditions. With that said, I would absolutely trust an Amazon mesh system over [amazon_textlink asin='B01MAW2294' text='Google WiFi' template='ProductLink' store='betanews02-20' marketplace='US' link_id='8baebc34-d368-4d93-9a16-93072b45c70b']...
Why do you think Amazon wants to enter this business? Please sound off in the comments below.


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T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom AG is once again waving its magenta trademark around and threatening companies who dare use any bright pink hue to market their products and services, this time targeting smartwatch producer OXY.
According to an OXY blog post, the German telecom sent the smartwatch company a confidential "notice of threatened opposition" letter on November 3rd, 16 days before it expected its trademark to become official. The contents of the letter couldn't be disclosed, but it likely said something along the lines of "stop using magenta, or else."
At first, OXY didn’t fully understand why T-Mobile would go after it, considering it solely has smartwatch ambitions, not telecom ones. However, a consultation with external advisors exposed T-Mobile's fierce magenta ownership desires. The telecom went after AT&T’s Aio Wireless in 2013 with a full-blown lawsuit alleging Aio's plum color scheme and similar wireless services tricked customers into thinking the low-cost carrier was associated with T-Mobile. Before that, in 2008, Deutsche went after tech blog Engadget Mobile for its use of magenta in its logo.
"Since we didn’t have the financial resources to fight Deutsche Telekom AG on this matter, and because we also didn’t want to just ignore them, we basically had two options left: We could either negotiate with Telekom to find a price for using the old logo, or we could change everything," OXY wrote. The company also noted the telecom could make a decent profit off suits like this, especially if magenta offenders would rather pay their way out of a legal problem.
OXY opted for the second option and modified more than 25,000 image files along with other design properties. It also registered new colors for its brand: yellow and black kohl. "Ultimately, we wanted to be able to focus on our upcoming Indiegogo campaign and the development of OXY, not legal issues."


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Regardless of where in the world something is happening, you can be assured it’s also happening on Reddit, one of the most popular websites in internet history — and one that is continuing to grow and evolve. Andre Stone and Ariana Escalante spoke with Jen Wong, Reddit chief operating officer and CES 2021 panelist, as part of Digital Trends’ comprehensive coverage of this year’s show.
“2020 showed us what’s really special about the core of Reddit,” Wong says. “People come to the communities they trust to be informed on the most important decisions, and things they care about. And this [past] year, there was a lot to care about.” What that really showed, she says, is that “online communities are a critical part of the future.”
And in times of constant change, the format of Reddit shines, she says. Because content is user-generated, it is able to respond and adapt instantly to whatever is happening in the world. Reddit is also formatted to have various “subreddits” of specific topics, from baking, to breaking political news, to favorite TV shows. “I personally spend a lot of time on the food boards,” Wong says, referring to a few of the hobbies she’s picked up during quarantine, such as making sourdough bread and pizzas.
So what does 2021 hold in store? Wong says a few interesting things are changing. “One thing that happened this year is strangers hanging out. We saw that a lot on Reddit,” she said. Site users meet, talk, and share in various subreddits, and then at the end of the day just go on about their lives. “This kind of real-time experience in hanging out was a behavior we saw,” she added.
Last year at CES, Wong encouraged brands to grow by “focusing on love.” Has that message changed at all over the past year? “I’m still in the same place,” she says. “The most positive and heartwarming things that happened on Reddit this past year was people helping people.”
Wong notes that while CES 2021 is different this year, and she’ll miss being able to attend in person to build and develop more relationships, the heart of the show still forges on. This past year, “we saw humanity emerge day-to-day, minute-by-minute [on Reddit]. And the heart of that was still love,” she said.
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We’re proud to have a place on the B2B Marketing’s UK Agencies Benchmarking report 2021!
It’s been a full year since lockdown was announced. One whole revolution around the Sun. And what a year it’s been. At this juncture, it’s good to look back on how the B2B marketing and branding industry has fared – alongside the findings from the B2B Marketing’s UK Agencies Benchmarking Report 2021.
Celebrating the resilience of the B2B sector.
This year’s hotlist of the UK’s top B2B marcomms and branding agencies makes for fascinating reading, with old names and new forming a dynamic picture of an industry that’s remarkably resilient; that’s buoyant and thriving – especially compared to the brutal realities of life in the B2C sphere.
Delving a little deeper, we see the industries that particularly bucked the downward trends of 2020 – notably ones like construction and manufacturing. Certainly, from our own client experience, we can attest to the strong performance and ambitious goals for our clients right across these fields.
Steady upward movement.
All of which gives us a great footing for the news that (face it) all of us are waiting for – how did we do? Where did we place in the challenging year gone by?
Well, it’s great news: the 2021 report sees Wyatt International rising up from 2020. Not only does this put us in the upper echelons of B2B’s finest, but it sees us ranked as the highest-rated Midlands B2B agency appearing on the list. Not a bad year’s work – and proof that smart positioning is the key to success in a very different age.
Proving the power of post-digital positioning.
2020-2021 saw us launch our new vision and mission for our team. One rooted in the enduring need for brand and business value creation. That’s what organisations seek, it’s what people look for, and it’s what we unlock: diving into the heart of our clients’ brands to find the value at their core, then deploying multichannel, post-digital thinking to transform performance.
It’s been a year where the proof of this has been matched by the realisation of our bilateral business approach: combining consultancy and activation to deliver the kind of value that’s beyond the capabilities of sole B2B marketing consultancies or pure play creative agencies.
And it’s been a year where we’ve seen our team expand significantly – bringing in new talent to meet demand across sectors and channels, and give us a strong platform for further growth in the years to come.
So, onward and upward – with a firm focus on what’s always mattered, and what matters now more than ever: the ability to secure and deliver true value.


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A make-up artist is asking for $10 million damages from the Kardashians and Boldface Group Inc, claiming they stole her brand name.
The Kardashian sisters are being sued for $10 million.
Reality TV stars Kim, Kourtney and Khloe could face a mammoth legal bill following make-up artist Lee Tillett's claim they stole the name of their new cosmetics range, Khroma Beauty, from her.
Lee is also asking for damages from Boldface Group Inc, the company that markets their line, after a cease and desist letter sent last July imploring them to stop using the name failed to work.
She told the Orlando Sentinel: ''I developed the Kroma line myself, built my business through my own hard work, and took the legal steps necessary to protect it.
''And yet I have now been forced into legal battle with the Kardashians simply because they have decided to take something that doesn't belong to them.''
Boldface petitioned a Florida court to rule Lee's brand name ''conceptually weak'', because it ''consists solely of a descriptive term and lacks any inherent distinctive meaning to the relevant consuming public.''
The make-up artist - who set up her line in 2004 - responded by claiming the confusion over the names is affecting her business as customers assume it is connected with the infamous sisters' recently-launched products.
She said: ''The false association is damaging ... and threatens to destroy its business.''
Meanwhile, Lee's attorney Elliot Gipson claims Kim - who says she came up with the name herself - was aware via her placement agents TLK Fusion of a 2010 deal to ensure product placement for Kroma on an E! Entertainment show Kim was due to produce.
He said: ''On or about May 2010, representatives for Tillett and TLK Fusion were engaged in discussions regarding the possible product placement of the KROMA cosmetics line on the television reality show special 'The SPINdustry' that was scheduled to air on E! Entertainment Television following an episode of 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians'.''
The Armenian beauties are also currently entangled in a lawsuit with Los Angeles-based Chroma Makeup Studio.
Corgan took to Instagram to confirm rumours of new Pumpkins material, saying the first songs could arrive as early as May.
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Earlier in 2020, the world of business was rocked by the start of the pandemic. Stock markets started to crash around the world as the full economic shock was felt in every country of the world. Since then, times have been tough for many businesses, and it has led to some having to close down permanently.
Something that has happened though is a digital revolution in the business world – many businesses have now managed to adapt and evolve as the crisis has unfolded and have used the internet to keep going.
In the last decade, many businesses have had to move with the times when it comes to the internet, but this has made many re-think how they work and consider the long-term ways in which their company operates.
For example, many employers have benefitted from employees working from home, as this means that there is no need for an office it can save them money. Staff have equally found working from home to be beneficial, as childcare and other commitments can be more easily adapted around working schedules.
Companies have also started to embrace more technology in order to help them to boost business in an increasingly online world – from companies like this SEO Belfast based company who can help the business to be more visible online, to utilising social media to get the word out their about their business and to market the company to the target audience.


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Review average scorer OpenCritic announced that it will now begin notifying readers of any games that use loot box mechanics.
Using titles such as Star Wars Battlefront II and Middle-earth: Shadow Of War as the inspiration behind the idea, OpenCritic has made the decision to also state when the loot boxes are available in-game.
The team behind the website believes loot boxes are a negative for the industry as a whole, and the rest of the community seem to agree as there has been many cases of negative backlash such as Star Wars Battlefront II, various FIFA and NBA cases with EA and 2K getting caught in the middle. The general feeling is that these games are being too greedy – asking them to pay additional funds into a game they had already purchased for content they believed should already be in the base title.
“Loot boxes prey on human’s generally poor ability to accurately understand and internalise probabilities, especially at the extremes. Rather than offer in-game items directly, loot boxes are used to mask the underlying cost of extremely attractive items,” the OpenCritic announcement says.
OpenCritic looks at averages like unknown, random rewards, monetisation, and encouraged usage of items to determine whether or not a game utilises loot boxes, and games found to be using these items will be flagged within OpenCritic page of the game, displayed with a bright orange banner seen on the top of the page.


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Big Sandy Superstore, which entered the Dayton-area market last fall with a new store near the Dayton Mall in Miami Twp., has decided on a location for its second Dayton-area location: Huber Heights.
The company has submitted site development plans to the city of Huber Heights to open a new store at 5239 Taylorsville Road, which formerly housed the Huber Heights Racquetball Club.
The plans have not yet been reviewed by city staff, and they must go through an approval process that also includes the Huber Heights Planning Commission and City Council, Assistant City Manager Scott Falkowski said this afternoon, Monday May 18.
“The property is currently zoned for commercial use. This use is different than the currently approved plan, and they are planning on expanding the building, so that is why it goes to Planning Commission and City Council,” Falkowski said.
>> ALSO NEW TODAY: Old Scratch Pizza Dayton to shut down temporarily for renovations
Richard E. Shaw Jr., Huber Heights City Council member for Ward 1, said he is encouraged by the plans.
“I think that during the Covid-19 outbreak, to see a property like that sold and economic development going on in Huber Heights, that is great news,” Shaw said.
Montgomery County property records show the 2.3-acre Taylorsville Road property was purchased for $375,000 less than three weeks ago by an LLC connected with Big Sandy.
Company officials did not immediately return a request for comment.
Big Sandy Superstores are designed to be four stores in one, selling furniture, mattresses, appliances and HDTVs, Big Sandy CEO Robert VanHoose told this news outlet last summer.
The company, based in Franklin Furnace in south-central Ohio, operates 19 stores in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Big Sandy invested nearly $2 million in its first Dayton-area location last year, transforming a 53,360-square-foot building at 2400 Miamisburg Centerville Road that previously housed an Elder-Beerman Furniture Store.
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Company CEO Michael Joyce has announced his new mission to find the right investor to take on Hargrave Custom Yachts during the first half of 2019. The new ‘money partner’ will continue the business alongside long-standing company President, Michael DiCondina and the Hargrave team. Since forming Hargrave Custom Yachts in 1997, the company has been responsible for building custom motoryachts such as Hargrave 101, Hargrave 116 Renaissance and DREAmer and has grown to become well-recognised in the yachting industry. After disclosing an order book with over 300-metres of new yachts under construction around the world valued in excess of $100 million at last year’s Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, Hargrave is tipped to have an interesting display planned for the 2019 show. Photo: Hargrave“When you look at the brokerage market you can see that Mike DiCondina and his team were selling and delivering new Hargrave yachts throughout the decade-long recession and now he has the company poised to expand into even larger yachts when the next wave of exciting new models begin to appear in the marketplace over the next 18 months, including the largest Hargrave built to date at 184’ in length” said Joyce.
“Mike DiCondina is going to be doing this for another 30 years,” said Joyce, “so obviously he needs to find the right person or company to match up with his vision for the future and I can’t wait to see where this company will be in another ten years,” he added.
SuperYacht Times - The State of Yachting 2020
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#weknow - do you want to know? Buy the report now for only €299!


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Posted by Laura McCallister, Multimedia Producer - email
WAUWATOSA, WI (KCTV) -
A Wisconsin teen is cashing in on an ugly holiday tradition - Christmas sweaters.
When teenage boys take to the basement for hours at a time, moms start to worry. Unless you are the mother of 18-year-old Jack McCarthy. His obsession in his parents' Wauwatosa basement revolves around Christmas sweaters so tacky some people find them beautiful.
Since selling his first one three years ago, Jack McCarthy has made a ton of money.
"We sold it on EBay and it went for about $50 and we were surprised that sweaters would have that kind of market," he said.
Inspired by that revelation, Jack McCarthy built his stockpile at every flea market, thrift store and yard sale across six different states.
Wednesday, July 30 2014 3:15 PM EDT2014-07-30 19:15:51 GMT
Pointing the finger at Republicans for Congressional inaction, President Barack Obama accused them of posturing and doing everything they can to stymie economic growth.More >
Pointing the finger at Republicans for Congressional inaction, President Barack Obama accused them of posturing and doing everything they can to stymie economic growth because they are not happy he is president.
Tuesday, July 29 2014 5:50 AM EDT2014-07-29 09:50:38 GMT
Copyright 2014 WWBT NBC12. All rights reserved.More >
Listeria is listed on the the baby's death certificate as an immediate cause of her death. Her mother, says that while she was pregnant, she ate food that was part of a recent, nation-wide Listeria recall.More >
Wednesday, July 30 2014 7:45 AM EDT2014-07-30 11:45:17 GMT
It's not a disease and it's not contagious, but "Invisible Black Dog Syndrome" is a sad, real condition affecting local animal shelters. The term refers to the propensity of would-be-adopters walkingMore >
It's not a disease and it's not contagious, but "Invisible Black Dog Syndrome" is a sad, real condition affecting animal shelters. More >


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Large-volume balers may have a growing market as home deliveries and sustainability push containerboard volumes to new heights.
Large-volume balers, such as this one from Presona, help keep paper recycling rates high around the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused numerous adjustments to how people work, study and interact socially. Among those trends was a greater reliance on home deliveries (most often in cardboard boxes) and a heavier reliance on retail groceries—a sector that receives its merchandise most commonly in boxes made of containerboard.
Thanks to commercial recycling programs and the work of community recycling programs and material recovery facility (MRF) operators who collect and bale old corrugated containers (OCC) from the residential stream, the boxes enjoy a high recycling rate.
The vast majority of this collected OCC has a date with a baler in the course of its recycling journey. As recycling companies and programs grow in scale (as does OCC volume), it has prompted baler manufacturers to design and make balers that can handle the steady stream of discarded boxes.
Sweden-based Presona offers one example with its MP 270 MH baler, introduced last year. Presona says the baler has been designed to reduce recycling costs while increasing operational efficiency. The firm touts what it calls “a revolutionary new design concept that creates super-high capacity while being very cost-effective. This means that a single MP 270 MH baler can replace several smaller balers at a significantly lower cost.”
The new baler also is referred to as Presona’s Mega model, and the firm says it “is intended for recycling and sorting plants or other businesses that bale large quantities of material.” Presona says the MP 270 MH “has a real capacity of 45 metric tons (49.6 short tons) of material per hour.” The firm says that’s 50 percent more than Presona’s second-largest baler, the LP 140, and three times as much as the smaller LP 60.
The Swedish firm is far from alone in offering large volume balers for OCC and other materials being baled in large volumes to meet the world’s growing recycling rates.
In August 2020, Canada-based Machinex reported having sold and installed 12 two-ram high-capacity balers in Canada and the United States during the previous 12 months.
“One of our clients in St. Louis considered four other major two-ram baler manufacturers as a part of their buying process,” said the company’s Rusty Angel. “They selected the Machinex baler because we had the lowest ‘cost of ownership’ over a 10-year period when considering baling capacity and annual maintenance.”
Netherlands-made Bollegraaf balers have been sold in North America by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, Norwalk, Connecticut, for several decades. In a custom publishing piece prepared for Van Dyk last year, two of its customers credited the considerable capacity of their Bollegraaf units as one of the baler’s strong points.
“We’re a one-baler facility with a smaller footprint,” said Scott Jenkins of Oregon-based EFI Recycling. “We can’t increase our footprint, but we can increase our speed and capacity. With the [Bollegraaf] HBC140, we can run the same tonnage as a facility twice our size. Right off the bat, it added 25 percent to our capacity with no signs of slowing down. Most of the time, we can’t feed it fast enough.”
Brian Dubis, a MRF operations manager at Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp., said, “We have an HBC120 for containers and an HBC140 for fiber. Both exceed our expectations of throughput and uptime for our 50-ton per hour system.”
In 2018, Florida-based International Baler Corp. (IBC) began making its ATX auto-tie baler series, which it describes as a high-volume, “European style” baler for MRF and municipal solid waste (MSW) applications.
Designed for high-production applications, the ATX auto-tie baler is ideal for single- and dual-stream recycling facilities, large fiber processors and municipalities where speed is a necessity, according to IBC. The ATX is capable of processing more than 60,000 cubic feet of material per hour, with throughputs of up to 50 tons per hour.
Among balers offered by Georgia-based Harris, its Conquest line “dramatically increase production while virtually eliminating bridging problems,” according to the company. Harris says the Conquest 180 model can bale up to 45 tons per hour of OCC and from 60 to 90 tons per hour of old newspapers (ONP) and high grades of fiber.
The recovered fiber to feed these large balers seems unlikely to diminish. In the United States, according to the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), the OCC recycling rate remained close to 90 percent in 2020 despite some difficulties in collection when COVID-19 was rampant and distancing restrictions were widespread.
In its summary of U.S. paper recycling activity in 2020, AF&PA says recycled paper use at U.S. pulp and paper mills rose by about 286,000 tons, and U.S. mill consumption of OCC reached a record high of 22.8 million tons.
AF&PA President and CEO Heidi Brock says, “Our industry leadership remains strong with $4.1 billion in manufacturing infrastructure investments, announced, planned or made, from 2019 to 2023, to continue the best use of recycled fiber in our products.”


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With the recent news of Walmart selling its majority stake in Asda, could this mean an end to the extensive range of brilliant Halloween products that came from this fusion of US/UK businesses?
In April this year, news of Sainsbury’s purchase of a majority of Asda – which was wholly owned by Walmart – was met with mixed reactions. Some saw it as a positive move, particularly in terms of helping Sainsbury’s compete with Tescos. But analysts were concerned about competition issues, and a small number of Halloween lovers were worried about something else – ‘if Asda weakens its ties with Walmart, will they care so much about Halloween anymore?!’
The growth of Asda’s reputation as a Halloween retailer has had a lot to do with Walmart. By being attached to the US supermarket giant, Asda has a reliable pipeline to products that might not be readily available to other retailers.
Many of our readers have commented in the past that products we have seen on Asda shelves were previously available at Walmart stores. And Asda’s enthusiasm for Halloween generally is far more in line with a US mentality than a typical UK one (although the British do seem to be more receptive in recent years). Would weakening ties with Walmart make Asda less enthusiatic about Halloween? Lets face it, Sainsbury’s is hardly a leader when it comes to Halloween goods.
As part of this connection to Walmart, each year the PR team at Asda take a trip over to the US to scope out Halloween products for the following year. This gives them the opportunity to keep their fingers on the US Halloween pulse and deliver great products to the UK (albeit a year after the US). Again, this was something that could have been in jeopardy with the takeover.
So, knowing how much Asda means to our readers, we got in touch with Asda to find out whether our fears were warranted. We were keen to know whether Asda would still retain its connections to the US, be inspired by US products and find out if Asda’s Halloween stock will eventually mirror that of Sainsbury’s. Thankfully, the response was short, simple and reassuring:
“As Walmart will remain to have a 42% share in the business, there are no plans to change the inspiration process. As you know, Halloween only continues to get bigger and better every year so we are constantly looking at ways to grow and expand the range.
“If the proposed merger goes through, then then we’ll continue to operate as two separate businesses so the ranges won’t be affected.”
So it’s good news for Asda fans for now. Indeed the range that appears in stores this year shouldn’t be that affected anyway as their research/product selection would have taken place before the merger was announced.
Walmart’s influence looks to be a long-term which should be a good thing, particularly as Halloween grows in popularity over here.
Now we can focus fully on the Asda Halloween 2018 range, which we hope to preview very soon!


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Google Is Sued for Alleged Anticompetitive Practices on its Play Store Platform
Consumers do not really know the mechanics of the Google Play platform. All they know is that they pay to download an app and the bill shows up on their credit card. Now, the dynamics of the market are coming into play in a class-action lawsuit that has been filed against Google. The internet giant has been accused on anticompetitive and monopolistic practices with regard to the platform. Right now, there is one plaintiff in the case, but the plaintiff's attorneys are seeking more developers to join the class.
Google Takes a 30% Cut of Play Store Sales
The lawsuit claims that app developers end up at the mercy of Google, which completely controls the platform. The plaintiff alleges that Google exploits its market power to stifle innovation discourage competition. As a result, Google is able to charge developers a 30% cut of the download price of their apps. Google claims that the fee is to compensate it for distributing the apps and its services.
Where Google has a competitive advantage is that it can bundle its Play Store with the Android operating system. This keeps competitors such as Amazon from being able to be on a level playing field since they do not have their own operating system. Theoretically, Amazon could distribute apps at a lower cost, charging the developers a lower percentage of their sales.
Google is not the only app store that has been sued over allegedly anticompetitive practices. Apple is also the defendant in a private lawsuit that was filed by Epic Games that has accused it of similar conduct to Google. Apple is also being investigated by the federal government for antitrust law violations over this fact pattern. Epic has also sued Google for taking the popular Fortnite game off of the Play Store platform. The company now claims that Google puts apps that are downloaded outside of its own platform at a relative disadvantage to Play Store apps.
Fortnite's Developer Tried to Go Around Apple and Google
Taking the allegations in these lawsuits as true, the companies' behavior makes life more difficult for consumers. This would drive up the price of apps as developers will need to raise their prices to factor in the outsize cut that Google takes. In the case of Epic Games' consumers have had to pay higher prices when they buy V-Bucks for the game through Play Store. Epic has now tried to sell V-Bucks to players through direct sales, charging them less since Google is not able to take their cut. This was the direct predicate for Google and Apple kicking Epic Games off of their platforms. Epic seemingly provoked this action so that it could file its lawsuits.
Consumers will also have few choices for where to buy their apps as Apple and Google make it more difficult for consumers to access apps outside of their platform. These lawsuits represent the latest legal headache for Big Tech as its behavior is under increasing scrutiny in the media and from government.
Google has fought hard to exert control over the Play Store platform. The company has aggressively removed apps that do not comply with its rules. It has even taken apps off when their developers have cooperated with the federal government.
To be clear, gamers can still play Fortnite on the Apple and Google devices. They just need to work a little harder to find and download the game. If Apple and Google completely blocked the app, it would be an egregious violation of antitrust law. Epic has its own app and website that players can use to download the app. However, they will need to specifically look for the app as opposed to finding it in Play Store.
The stakes in these lawsuits are high. Apple rakes in billions of dollars each year from its cut of app and in-app purchases. This is a cash cow for both of these tech giants so it is highly unlikely that they will be compromising and settling this case. Epic's lawsuit will likely go all the way to trial because the tech companies would lose a major slice of revenue if they settled the case. There are estimates that Apple and Google make almost $20 billion combined from App Store and Play Store respectively. In the meantime, these cases represent part of the growing scrutiny of the alleged monopoly power that these companies have and their resulting costs for American consumers.
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Last night we had reported that the CBI had arrested Micromax co-founder Rajesh Agarwal on account of bribery as he had allegedly bribed an MCD engineer Rs 30 lakh to get clearance for building a banquet hall. Now, the company has officially released a statement saying that Mr Agarwal has stepped down from daily duties and recused himself from responsibility. The company also claims that Manish Tuli has no links with the company. Read on to see the entire statement. Also Read - Micromax to bring a budget phone with price likely under Rs 10,000: Check launch date
Rajesh Agarwal, co-founder, Micromax Informatics Limited has stepped down from his duties and recused himself from the responsibilities. He will focus on the legal proceedings to clear his name of the alleged charges. Also Read - 5 delayed smartphone launches in India due to COVID-19 in May 2021
Following the media reports that owners of Micromax have been arrested by CBI, Micromax Informatics Limited clarifies that Manish Tuli has no association with the company. Rajesh Agarwal was present in his personal capacity with Manish Tuli.


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Embedded into the website of Lynn bakery One Mighty Mill is a crash course on how industrialization significantly altered where our food comes from. On the site, the company’s mission statement reads in the form of a provocative question: “When did flour become so evil?”
If you didn’t come to this article with prejudgments about flour and really just want to get to the beer content, please, the simple but necessary context is this: Fresh-milled flour made on site is the key to the flavor of One Mighty Mill’s bagels, tortillas, and pretzels, all made more nutritious by that stone-grinding process.
It’s those bagels, actually, that prompted Night Shift Brewing cofounder Michael Oxton to explore a partnership with One Mighty Mill. If stone-ground wheat made the baked goods taste so good, why couldn’t it do the same for a beer?
The one catch, and it was a big one, is that brewing beer with middlings, the part of the wheatberry the company is unable to use in bagels, isn’t easy.
“Our middlings are pretty fine,” says One Mighty Mill CEO Jon Olinto. “I had chased a lot of different local brewers to try and use these. You have to want it to work.”
Olinto wanted it to work because as his company has expanded, it’s gone from paying to compost hundreds of pounds of middlings to needing to compost around 2,000 pounds per week. Keeping the organic, locally sourced, nutritious product in the food system would be better.
“In the best situation, 100 percent of our wheatberries would be milled and used in the food,” says Olinto.
After agreeing to partner, Night Shift’s brewing team commenced several rounds of R&D, adding One Mighty Mill’s middlings to small batches of beer and tinkering with the recipes. The beer they landed on, aptly called One Mighty Beer, is a hoppy kolsch landing at 5.6 percent alcohol by volume and brewed with that upcycled wheat.
“We noticed it gives you this super round full body,” Oxton says. “It adds a little extra haze, and it’s like this biscuity — honestly the best way to describe it is fresh bread flavor that’s complemented by whatever else is going on in the beer. With this one it’s giving a little tangelo citrus.”
In more good news for Olinto, Night Shift’s team liked the flavor differences in One Mighty Beer so much that they’re adding upcycled wheat middlings to all batches of their flagship beer Whirlpool going forward. Oxton says he thinks dedicated beer fans will be able to tell the difference.
One more thing to know about One Mighty Beer is that it’s a Whole Foods exclusive. The beer will be available at select Whole Foods stores in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Maine, and Massachusetts beginning this week.


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Will Tesla’s Robotaxis Come to Its Rescue?
Level 5 autonomy and driverless ride-sharing are the next capital-raisers for the Elon Musk–led automaker.
A Thursday morning news item from the investor website Seeking Alpha merely hinted at the automaker's apparently imminent downfall. One of the most bullish of Wall Street Tesla bulls regarding Tesla—and there are many—it has lowered the company's stock recommendation from "buy" to "hold."
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has reduced Tesla's target value from $365 down to $275 per share. Well, Tesla will always have Adam Jonas.
Ives apparently still sees something in Tesla that many of us away from Wall Street and outside Silicon Valley do not, because as I write this 24 hours after CEO Elon Musk's First Quarter 2019 financial results call with analysts, the company's shares were off 4.26 percent for the day, to $247.63. Not long ago, Tesla's market cap was greater than General Motors, but now GM is worth roughly $55.6 billion versus Tesla's $43 billion.
Ford Motor Company, worth $37.6 billion, should catch Tesla based solely on its rather brilliant $500 million investment in rival EV maker Rivian, but it won't. Problem is, folks, that we're still talking about an electric-vehicle revolution that doesn't show any signs of starting, despite all the new product coming from GM, Ford, Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo's Polestar. Perhaps Toyota is smartest of all, concentrating on hybrid technology and working to develop hydrogen fuel cells. Autoline TV reports that sales of EVs from brands other than Tesla are down even more than Tesla, and that the entire EV market is falling three times as quickly as the overall auto market. While early adaptors and enthusiasts even outside Tesla's small but loyal following will start to scoop up Mustang-inspired Ford EVs and Porsche Taycans and the like, the average new-car buyer isn't likely to take a chance on an electric vehicle even if it has more than 300 miles of range and commands a premium of $5,000 or less over its closest gasoline-engine-powered equivalent, so long as gas remains cheap.
Musk told investment analysts Wednesday, "We do see strong demand for the S, X, and 3." Tesla is about to begin building right-hand-drive Model 3s for those export markets requiring them. "Overall, I feel really good about where things are headed."
Early in the call, Musk shouted out our friends at MotorTrend for having just proved the Tesla Model S's best-among-EVs 370-mile range, in a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles at normal highway speeds and against headwinds. Plus, the trip was uphill all the way and done while pulling a horse trailer (not really, the last two things are made up).
Tesla posted a $722 million loss in the first quarter, worse than Q1 of 2018's $709.6 million loss, and far worse than its rare net profit in Q4 '18, of $139.5 million, but Musk says the company will be back in the black again by the third quarter of this year. He says Tesla will begin building both its EV semi-truck (prototypes of which, he says, have already been used to deliver a few cars) and the all-important Model Y compact crossover next year, though he declined to announce where they will be produced.
The company is trying to decide between California (its Fremont assembly plant) or Nevada (its Gigafactory outside of Reno), he said. "We expect maybe a decision on that, soon." Tooling for the Model Y has been ordered, he added.
Asked about the Model Y's daily order rate, Musk responded that, "I don't think we want to play up the granularity of orders, because people read too much into it. We won't comment on Model Y demand, because it's not in production yet."
Let's go back to April 15, 2016, when Fortune magazine reported two weeks after Tesla started taking orders on the Model 3 that it had deposits for about 400,000 cars, quoting to a presentation by Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla's vice president of business development.
Wednesday, Musk once again described the actual manufacturing of cars to be a very hard activity to accomplish, though he touted Tesla's overall efficiency, which explains how the firm will begin production of two new models next year when it hasn't even identified their assembly-plant locations. Musk says total production this year of Models 3, S, and Y will be 500,000 units.
"In our 20 years of covering tech stocks on the Street we view this quarter as one of the top debacles we have ever seen while Musk & Co., in an episode out of The Twilight Zone, act as if demand and profitability will magically return to the Tesla Story," Ives warns in his letter to investors.
Good thing Musk still has fawning groupie Adam Jonas, auto analyst for Morgan Stanley. It was Jonas who asked Musk on Wednesday whether he might still take the company private.
"That ship has sailed," Musk told Jonas.
In a reversal from comments made in past quarterly financial analyst calls, Musk is open to raising more capital. Tesla paid $920 million for convertible bonds due in Q1, which explains in part why its cash-equivalent on hand was $2.2 billion, down from $3.7 billion at the end of 2018. Musk acknowledged that next year's new models, the Y and the semi, will need about $2.5 billion to launch.
Autonomy to the rescue!
Two days earlier, on Monday, Tesla took investors for a ride in what it claimed are Level 5 autonomous cars in a loop around the San Francisco Bay Area. (A Tesla skeptic published photographs alleged to show the company mapping the route with an external camera mounted on the back of a red Model S, and now the skeptic, who goes by the Twitter handle @skabooshka has stopped tweeting because he fears legal action. Because this is 2019, a GoFundMe has been set up on @skabooshka's behalf for possible legal fees.)
Before the on-road demo, Tesla engineers described in great technical detail the computer and chips they have developed for L5 autonomy (they've thrown out NVIDIA in favor of their own), and Musk talked about the company's plans for L5 robotaxi car-sharing. All Teslas leaving the Fremont factory now have the L5 hardware and will take only an overnight flash to upgrade the software for full self-driving, Musk said. Tesla expects that to happen by the end of the year, and in 2020 Tesla will launch a car-sharing program in select cities including San Francisco and New York, in which owners or lessees can join the Tesla Network and loan out their autonomy-enabled vehicles when otherwise not in use. Like Uber and Lyft, Tesla will take a share of the ride-share proceeds.
Musk expects his company to deliver vehicles without pedals or steering wheels in a few years, and also says as L5 takes over the Model 3 could be de-contented down to a price as low as $25,000. Federal regulators will allow Tesla to go to L5 when they see the vast data the company have been collecting on its drivers for years, although Musk allows that regulators can take a lot of time. "Probably Tesla" will be responsible for any accidents caused by the L5 autonomy, though it should be noted that a few quarterly analyst calls ago, Musk blamed Tesla Autopilot crashes on those customers who "know too much" about the technology. On Wednesday, Musk said Tesla would at some point offer its own insurance policies for its customers.
With the promise of L5 autonomy by the end of this year, as mainline automakers warn there needs to be far more regimented testing, development, and cost-cutting through mass production of components before we get to Level 3 or Level 4, Tesla is once again pitching itself to Wall Street as the sort of disrupter that will have the only car worth having when the world changes overnight.
I have been impressed with Tesla's Model S—our 2013 Automobile of the Year—and the Model 3. But Musk doesn't seem to understand that the 400,000 or so North American customers who put down deposits for the Model 3 won't reappear year after year, which is why it needs the Model Y ASAP in order to prop up demand.
Similarly, Musk doesn't understand that L5 Teslas won't put other automakers out of business overnight. Or rather, he does understand that Wall Street doesn't understand as much. That's what he's counting on for Tesla's next urgent infusion of capital.


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The price of Bitcoin has dropped quite a bit over the past 24 hours with the USD value plummeting to $480 per bitcoin. The price has partially rebounded however, hovering around $540 at press time. Meanwhile, much of the blame is being pointed at the compromised Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex.
Bitfinex Breach Shakes Up The Community
On August 2nd, during the course of the day, the price of Bitcoin steadily dropped until mid-afternoon eastern standard time, when the currency’s value suddenly plummeted. This decline period was most likely due to Bitfinex announcing their security had been breached, resulting in stolen customer funds. The exchange immediately halted all services and posted this announcement on their website:
According to social media, the hack allegedly drained Bitfinex of 120,000 BTC (60 million USD). The company has not officially stated how much was stolen, nor whether they will reimburse customers. Other discussions have been pointing at the company BitGo, because their multi-signature services may have been a vector in the attack. The company denied fault, tweeting:
As we directly notified our customers earlier today, our investigation has found no evidence of a breach to any BitGo servers.
— BitGo (@BitGo) August 2, 2016
Across many forums, Bitcoin users went wild with commentary, and many complained about exchanges and the traders who store money on them. Lots of people have been upset by the hack, worried that mainstream media will use it to put Bitcoin in a negative light once again.
Other exchanges like Bitstamp who also use BitGo said via Twitter:
We would like to reassure all customers that Bitstamp’s implementation of multisig is fundamentally different from the one at Bitfinex.
Hack Propels Price Drop
Well before this incident, Bitcoin.com reported on the slow decline of the bitcoin price. At the time of the report, the value looked overbought, as charts revealed a bearish run with a downward trendline from the ascending channel pattern.
The Bitfinex incident may have just sped up the ongoing devaluation process, contributing to a decline of roughly 22% in a matter of hours.
Bitcoin’s price seems to have consolidated though, paring some losses. Now, everyone is eagerly waiting for the official news from Bitfinex on how the breach happened.
What do you think about the price and the Bitfinex hack? Do you think the two are correlated? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Bitcoin.com’s price index, Bitfinex, Pixabay


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“There’s a lot going on in this space,” Swami Sivasbramanian, Amazon’s vice president of databases, analytics and machine learning, said at a March meeting, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. . “We have a lot planned and are very excited to share some of our plans for the future.”
When ChatGPT launched in November and generative AI exploded onto the scene, it was OpenAI, a formerly non-profit research group, that triumphed. Tech giants Google and Microsoft (Microsoft invested billions in his OpenAI) rushed to catch up and soon launched chatbot products Bard and Bing respectively.
But despite running the largest cloud computing business, having the most employees and a market valuation of over $1 trillion, Amazon was not among them.
Amazon Web Services has announced partnerships with AI companies such as Stability AI and Hugging Face. This will enable other companies to use Amazon’s infrastructure to build artificial intelligence products. The company uses machine learning in many business units, including Alexa and Amazon.com search. However, some speculate that the company is lagging behind due to its failure to launch generative AI for consumers.
Recently, a select group of venture capitalists and AI company founders gathered at the Cerebral Valley AI conference, and Amazon seemed visibly absent. Some participants said the tech giant appears to be lagging behind its peers in his AI race.
At a recent all-hands meeting, management apparently disagreed with the idea.
Chatbots are just “one application of this kind of model,” Sivasbramanian said. His more than 100,000 machine learning customers at Amazon have expressed interest in using the company’s technology to improve personalization, search engine results and even automate his call centers, he said. said.
“Looking at how we innovate in machine learning, we have paved the way for machine learning adoption among mainstream enterprises and customers,” Sivasubramanian said. “We are excited to do the same thing in this space because it is evolving so quickly, but we will do it the Amazon way. We will look at what areas we are working on and how we can help our customers succeed in this area.”
Amazon has yet to comment. Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Post.
Not all employees seemed convinced. One of his AWS staffers, who commented on the all-hands video, said Amazon “is nowhere near allowing him to use AWS services like he can in her ChatGPT.”
Another employee, who seemed unsatisfied with the company’s response, decided to ask another source, ChatGPT, how Amazon could compete on AI. The employee posted a chatbot response containing a hoax of his Amazon technology in the comments on the video, confusing some colleagues.
Talk about generative AI technology and how it will reshape art, work, and life as we know it has rocked Silicon Valley lately. But early leaders in that conversation were smaller startups whose tools like Midjourney’s image generator and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E have become wildly popular. Their success raises questions about whether the tech giants are lagging behind in innovation. It also battles safety concerns as it flocks to the cutting edge of potential technology.
Big Tech has moved cautiously with AI. Then came ChatGPT.
The surge comes at a time when economic concerns are forcing these large companies to cut spending. In some cases, they are firing the very people they hired to implement AI safeguards.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told the Financial Times in February that the company has a strategy for generative AI.
“Most large, highly technical companies like ours have been working on these very large generative AI models for a long time,” he said.
Amazon tends to be pragmatic: A former Amazon employee who worked on AI, speaking on condition of anonymity to explain sensitive issues within the company, said Amazon typically keeps its experiments private. prefer to launch products with a clear market strategy.
Amazon Web Services works with AWS Polly, which automatically converts written text into “natural human speech,” and computer vision tools that can interpret what a camera sees and automatically alert people. We already sell several tools that leverage artificial intelligence, such as Amazon Panorama. Problems like broken products on conveyor belts.
Amazon grew relentlessly. I am thin now.
Amazon has also invested heavily in building its voice assistant, Alexa. But voice-activated chat technologies like Alexa and Siri are fundamentally very different from generative AI, which can learn and adapt rather than just answer questions. Amazon wanted customers to finally use Alexa to shop and order without having to pick up their phone or computer. However, while the speaker is popular, its behavior is not widespread.
And as Amazon tried to scale back and find focus due to an uncertain economy, it laid off thousands of employees, including hundreds who worked at Alexa.
Amazon begins widespread layoffs of big companies
But AWS CEO Adam Selipsky, who shared the stage with Sivasubramanian at All Hands in March, said there is “a lot going on across Amazon” when it comes to AI. I repeated.
The company is working on “some very exciting projects and products,” he said.
“I think it’s going to be really cool when they show up eventually.”
Gerrit De Vynck contributed to this report.


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Wherein others confirm what I already told you:
What I didn’t expect was that Microsoft would be stupid enough to go All-In with Nook Media. But Microsoft has not been the most rational corporation recently, what with Windows 8 tanking PC sales and the Surface going nowhere. Ballmer probably figures it’s easier and faster to buy an existing firm than to negotiate from scratch all those licenses Nook Media has.
The documents also reveal that Nook Media plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year as it transitions to a model where Nook content is distributed through apps on “third-party partner” devices. Speculation about the plan to discontinue the Nook surfaced in February. The documents we have are not clear on whether the third-party tablets would be Microsoft’s own Windows 8 devices, tablets made by others (including competing platforms) or both. Third-party tablets, according to the document, are due to get introduced in 2014.
Nook e-readers, meanwhile, do not appear to fall into the discontinuation pile immediately. Rather, they’re projected to have their own gradual, natural decline — following the general trend of consumers moving to tablets as all-purpose devices.
Techcrunch can rely on leaked docs all it wants. I’m telling you there will be a new Nook tablet this year and it will run Windows RT.
If you consider Microsoft acquiring Nook Media from the standpoint of keeping Windows RT alive, it makes perfect sense.
The Nook tablets have already been heavily marketed as “reading tablets.” So people buy them based on “reading” being prominent in their mind. Having access to Windows 8 apps would be gravy.
A successful Windows RT-based Nook Tablet keeps Windows RT alive, shows Microsoft’s partners that given the right hardware people will buy RT devices, and gets Nook Media out of the business of designing sleek yet very underpowered hardware.
But there’s absolutely no middle ground here. This must either be a spectacular success or it will be a record-setting failure of unprecedented scope, killing Nook Media, ruining all chances for Windows RT, and giving even more market share to Amazon in eBooks.
Microsoft doesn’t know how the hell to market the Surface. Psychos spasmodically dancing is no way to advertise anything other than an anti-seizure medication. Barnes & Noble has had good TV ads. Let Nook Media do the damn marketing for it to have any chance at all.
Finally, despite my earlier thinking Nook Media had a chance by adding the Google Play Store and doing deep discounts, my fondle of their new tablets changed all that. The Nook HD+ is just too weak. It’s already been eclipsed by sub-$200 iPad Mini clones from China and regular eight-inch Chinese tablets (available worldwide rebadged as the Archos 80 Titanium and Archos 80 Platinum). They have double the horsepower of the Nook HD+ and no delay-inducing skin slathered over Android. Plus, the seven-inch Nook HD just feels like cheap junk. Anyone who really wants a seven-inch tablet would be better served by getting the Nexus 7 and just using the Nook app (if they’re already tied into Nookbooks; otherwise get the damn Kindle app). Technology is now changing too fast for a once-a-year player like Nook Media (and even Amazon) to successfully compete. The cycle has shrunk to six months. That’s something Apple should pay attention to as well.


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Too much debt at Tenneco (NYSE:TEN)
Tenneco Inc. (NYSE: TEN) did not have a good year. The debt-ridden company has seen its net worth suffer significantly in recent months as the coronavirus-induced economic recession takes hold. TEN is too leveraged and its stock value is unlikely to rebound significantly in this environment. Investors should avoid common stock of this auto parts company.
too much debt
The reason this $350 million market cap company is unlikely to rebound comes down to one factor: TEN’s leverage. The management team was obviously heavily focused on this factor even before the current economic crisis set in. According to TEN’s corporate presentation in February, key 2020 targets included cost reductions of $200 million more than previously expected, capital efficiency improvements of $300 million and more and a repayment of the debt. Of course, the current macroeconomic crisis has made these goals difficult to achieve.
Source: Presentation of TEN Q4 2019 results
Before the world changed, I believed in management’s expectations for positivity in adjusted free cash flow for fiscal year 2020. However, I find that an unlikely outcome in the new environment in which we operate.
While TEN had $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the year, debt of almost $6 billion will weigh on the company in absolute terms. Net leverage ratios will increase as the denominator of EBITDA becomes smaller. Fortunately, the company has increased its maximum leverage ratio to 4.5x through the first quarter of 2021, but that may be too little to address the issues that will arise this year if a continued “depressed demand” environment continues. Sales of assets at less than favorable prices may have to take place as a result. Although I haven’t delved into competitor fundamentals, I would look to competitors such as Dorman (DORM) and Standard Motor (SMP) rather than investing more in TEN in the near term. I note that both are much less leveraged and in this environment strong balance sheets are a sign of quality to me as a potential shareholder. The market also seems to appreciate this, as the share prices of these two companies have held up much stronger than those of TEN on a YTD basis.
In light of a disturbing picture of demand for auto parts sales in the United States in 2020, TEN’s fate is sealed. Travel restrictions across the country will result in reduced vehicle mileage, which will reduce overall demand for the types of vehicle parts sold by TEN. Rising unemployment and supply chain disruption are also other major negative factors. Obviously this affects many companies in the automotive supply chain, not just TEN, but the debt situation at TEN is among the most dire. TEN achieved adjusted EPS of $3.22 in 2019; I expect full-year 2020 EPS to be well below that. Keep in mind that the company is exposed to the Chinese secondary market, so revenue will be hit on multiple fronts.
From a valuation perspective, the same reason why companies heavily exposed to secondary market demand are trading at premium multiples as pure OE companies will unfortunately mean that the current contraction in multiples is likely to remain in place until economic demand normalizes. TEN bulls were hoping for a separation of the company’s OE business (about 73% of EBITDA in 2019) and aftermarket business (about 27% of EBITDA in 2019). This separation may now be pushed back a year or more as the company waits for market valuations to rise again and reap the full value of such a corporate reorganization. In my view, the bullish case for TEN has become much weaker as the time frame for such a catalyst has been pushed back due to the short-term downturn the company is facing. Management is likely to focus on surviving and managing the now large indebtedness rather than unlocking increases in shareholder value through a separation from these near-term businesses.
The risks of avoiding an investment in TEN include the potential for management to seek cash from a variety of sources, including the sale of assets, which would strengthen the balance sheet and enable the company to meet its short-term debt service obligations. However, while this may cause stock values to jump in the short term as the prospect of bankruptcy fades, I would find this unfavorable as a longer-term investor, as the growth outlook for the business over a longer investment horizon are diminishing with the unloading of assets today. .
Additionally, TEN management could seek corporate or business development partnerships that inject cash up front in exchange for longer-term revenue share from the auto parts business. During the bull market of the past decade, I would have considered this a likely possibility, but in today’s market environment where cash is king, I find such an arrangement relatively unlikely.
TEN is too leveraged and equity investors are not facing a good risk/reward ratio at its current levels. Long-term investors should view the likelihood of bankruptcy as extremely likely and should avoid short-term action, at least until the balance sheet is clearer. Good luck to everyone.


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New Delhi: Soaring vegetable prices pushed up the retail inflation to double digits at 10.03 percent in August, up from 9.86 percent in the previous month. (Agencies)
According to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released on Tuesday, the highest rise in prices was for vegetables which recorded an increase of 20.79 percent during the month.
In the urban areas, the CPI rose to 10.19 percent during the month as compared to 10.10 percent in July. The retail price rise in rural areas worked out to be 9.90 percent during August up from 9.76 percent in the previous month.
The CPI for August, however, did not capture the impact of hike in diesel price announced by the government on September 13 to help the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) to reduce their under recoveries.
The CPI for food and beverages section during August increased by 12.03 percent, clothing, bedding and footwear by 10.71 percent and fuel and light by 7.55 percent.
Among the individual segments, steep rise in retail price was noticed in case of oil and fats (18.41 percent), followed by sugar (17.51 percent) and pulses and products (16.04 percent).
The Reserve Bank in its mid-quarter monetary policy on Monday had raised concerns about the price situation saying "as inflationary tendencies have persisted, the primary focus on monetary policy remains the containment of inflation and anchoring of inflation expectations."
The central bank had refrained from reducing the key pending rates despite persistent pressure from industry to cut them to promote sagging economic growth.
New Delhi: Soaring vegetable prices pushed up the retail inflation to double digits at 10.03 percent in August, up from 9.86 percent in the previous month.


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The group says it has performed in line with its expectations, with its online businesses continuing to perform very strongly, as retail in Italy began to reopen from mid-June.
Highlights from the period include the multi-state, multi-product deal with the Greenwood companies, which operate the Parx Casino, and subsequently launched in Michigan with further launches planned for the latter stages of 2021 and into 2022.
And in Europe, the group entered into a strategic agreement with Holland Casino. Playtech also announced a global distribution agreement with Scientific Games, while its business in Asia was stable through H1, in line with the levels achieved in H2 2020.
“Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic continues to pose challenges and the macroeconomic outlook remains uncertain with the possibility of further unexpected lockdowns, given the strong H1 performance and the momentum within the business, the board is confident of the company's prospects for the remainder of 2021 and beyond,” a statement from Playtech read.
The company added that it expects to publish a supplementary circular in the coming days to update shareholders on the Finalto sale process, while it will announce its interim results on 23 September 2021.


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Foreign crises and domestic economic unease have eroded President Barack Obama's public standing, sapping his ability to respond to overseas conflicts and weighing on fellow Democrats heading into the midterm elections.
As clouds gather abroad, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds Mr. Obama's job approval rating at 41%, matching a previous low. Approval of his handling of foreign policy hit a new low of 37%. Both numbers are driven in part by conflicts largely outside the president's control, including a new wave of sectarian violence in Iraq.
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