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Akoustis & Telus schedules and more ?4

08:01 08-May-24

Intel has confirmed license revocation with an 8-K filing.  It says this will put 2Q24 revenue in the lower half of its guidance range, but it continues to expect FY24 to grow both the top and bottom lines.

Some minor news to add before we get to tomorrow's earnings crush:

The Biden administration has reportedly revoked licenses for companies, including Intel, to sell chips to Huawei.  I don't know if this is political maneuvering for the election or just sheer incompetence, but today's UDC note piled on evidence that the rift isn't stopping China.  Banning sales to a single company there isn't likely to help as workarounds are probably easy if Huawei wants Gaudi 3 or other chips.  More important to me is Intel following in STMicro's footsteps by working with 14 Japanese companies to automate chip processes like packaging by 2028.  In my view this is what is truly needed for competitiveness and Intel is going to the right place, as Japanese companies have a long history in semiconductor production and still combine to provide almost a third of production equipment globally and half of the material inputs.

Slb is announced another "sizeable" contract to develop the Bestla project off Norway.  Neither contract seems to be helping SLB, which is down since the last report, just like oil.  That's despite Israel attacking Rafah after all, but in keeping with my trade note on the Slb call.

Finally, there's an update the demand link below, in that Google is adding sales staff for AI.  It's also on track to break many health devices by changing the underlying APIs, continuing a longstanding trend of megacaps buying innovators only to quell competition.  Most importantly, the company is attempting to avoid making the meaningful changes to its app store requested by Epic, just as I predicted. 

On 5/7/24 08:49, Esekla wrote:

Akoustis has scheduled the report on its fiscal third quarter for the morning of May 13th.  The average of four analyst estimates comes to a loss of 12 cents per share from $8.6M of revenue, increasing to $10.3M this quarter.  The EPS loss is much less than prior quarters, but that is largely due to dilution.  Following that, the company should have had a little over $20M in cash, and I will certainly update on that figure and look for any news on the pending litigation with Qorvo.  The revenue accelerating again is what we need to see, as projects go commercial, but I still doubt it will be fast enough to avoid having to raise more capital, even with eventual tax credit and stimulus.

Telus is also scheduled to first quarter report on Thursday morning, May 9th.  The average of a dozen analyst estimates is for 23 Canadian cents of EPS from CAD5.0b of revenue, improving to CAD5.1b this quarter.  This would be the quarter where we see another dividend bump up assuming the usual cadence, so I will report that along with the other numbers.  For its part, the company is the latest to introduce AI customer support via a collaboration with Microsoft.  Given that Telus has partnered with Google on so many other things, I find the selection interesting.  My own experience with such chatbots indicates that it could be useful for people who can't form good search parameters on their own, but for me, it mostly wastes time.  That said, I expect the effort will save Telus money, hopefully in concert with using its fiber network to enable flexible work and get quality real people on the job.

Speaking of money, and more importantly, the Canadian dollar has improved to just above 73 American cents in recent days; I've been looking for 75 cents and better in the long run.  Canadian politics may be to blame, and I've long cited its oil industry as a headwind.  On the former point, I note that an election there is probably still more than a year off, and the lone Canadian I know comments that the article

doesn't go into the ways that Trudeau has fed the perceptions of him as elitist - he's running at what seems like 1 scandal/year pace for accepting benefits from wealthy interested parties.

On the latter point, Shell's efforts to mitigate oil sands with non-viable carbon capture are giving it a black eye, and further support my views on greenwashing and the tenuous prospects for the technology.  Instead I've followed batteries as the main path forward, but as usual, the companies that are innovating in this space are still private.  Perhaps in the meantime, crypto-coin and AI applications falling flat will reduce energy demand?  We can always hope...

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