Notes From All Over -- Clearing Out The In-Box -- The Later Evening Edition -- January 27, 2021

I'm not checking the market until next week ... at least not on purpose. It's hard to avoid the market entirely but I will do my best. There's just too much craziness going on. I might check on GME. I don't want to miss the house of cards crashing. If not: "Houston, we have a problem."

Some random thoughts. 

First, something completely off-topic but lost in all the clutter of GME and AAPL today. 

Hinkley Point C. First two links : here and here.  

How did "we" miss this? From wiki:

Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is a project to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station with two EPR reactors in Somerset, England. 

The site was one of eight announced by the British government in 2010, and in November 2012 a nuclear site licence was granted. On 28 July 2016 the EDF board approved the project, and on 15 September 2016 the UK government approved the project with some safeguards for the investment. 

As of October 2020, Hinkley is the only one of the eight designated sites to have commenced construction. 

Items of note:

• 2010: the Bakken was just reaching its stride
• UK was closing its coal plants and replacing them with nuclear plants, though windmills were getting all the attention
• ten years later: this is the first of eight and it is still under construction
  
• anticipated price: £20.3 billion
• anticipated completion date: 2025
  

Now this from The [London] Guardian: behind schedule and running over budget. LOL.

• project delayed
• delay will likely add another half-billion pounds to the total cost
• could delay start date by another six months
• reason for delay? Covid-19 (see linked article for explanation)
• launch is now anticipated for summer of 2026
• number of workers limited on site due to physical-distancing requirements: 5,000
• holy mackerel: limited to 5,000 workers at any one time!
• this is the second major cost increase for Hinkley in under two years
• back in 2019 -- well before Covid-19 -- EDF Energy said that delays would increase the cost of the nuclear plant by £2.9 billion
• so, now we're up to almost £4 billion in increased costs for a £20 billion project (my figures)
• the Guardian's figures: costs have risen by £5 billion in the last five years; it will cost almost double the amount to build as first thought in 2008, and it will begin generating electricity almost a decade later than the original start date of Christmas, 2017
• thank goodness for global warming; the Brits would be freezing by now
• interestingly enough: none of this extra cost is carried by British taxpayers. The rising cost of the project will be shouldered by EDF Energy, which agreed to a guaranteed price of £92.50 for every megawatt-hour of electricity produced by HPC. That price remains unchanged by the delays.

Much more at the link. My hunch is that most folks can see what's going on.

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Miscellaneous

Mergers, acquisitions: I was once told that when there were mergers and/or acquisitions, it was not uncommon to find one or both of the companies involved in a bit of financial trouble. Obviously that's not always true, but it must be considered.

Apologists for Tesla were falling all over themselves today trying to find/report the silver linings in Tesla's cloudy 1Q21 earnings report today. Remember, the P/E of Tesla is approaching 1,700, and "everyone" says Apple's P/E of 40 is way too high (whereas Microsoft's P/E of 37 is just fine). I think it was Jay Powell, by the way, who recently said that valuations no longer matter, at least not during the pandemic, which by executive order, government employees can no longer call "Chinese flu," which to the best of my knowledge, was never a real problem in the first place. Wow, what a digression.

Where was I? Oh, yes, mergers and acquisitions. Lost in the clutter of today's hysteria: 

A google search this evening did not reveal anything. 

EV manufacturers have two problems

• acceptance by the general public;
• competition from each other (circular firing squads)

This popped up in my e-mail earlier this week, link here:

The study based on 155 in-market consumers was published last week and concluded that three in five consumers found the F-150 pickup truck appealing — which Cox attributed to familiarity. 

The respondents were shown images of each vehicle, without brand and model indicators and minus product details. 

Curbside appeal: Ford was popular among those surveyed in terms of appeal, winning over 59% of the respondents. General Motors Company GM 5.14% Hummer Electric Vehicle took second place at 41%. 

Amazon.com, Inc and Ford-backed Rivian came ahead of Tesla at 39%. 

The Elon Musk-led automaker’s Cybertruck came in at the last spot at 19%. 

Willing to consider: In terms of consideration, Ford led the pack at 45%, with three-quarters of respondents likely to consider the vehicle. Tesla came in second at 32%, Hummer at 28%, and Rivian at 25%. 

“Tesla and Rivian R1T scored well with younger buyers, and Rivian performed well among female buyers as well,” said Vanessa Ton, senior manager, Cox Automotive. 

The non-traditional look of the Tesla Cybertruck didn't impress potential buyers, according to the study. 

Price, performance, design, and size matter the most to potential EV truck customers, while the brand name and work use were the least important. [I think "price" was listed first for a reason.]

“Ford leads in every attribute except tech advanced, where Hummer and Rivian are nearly tied for the lead,” according to Cox Automotive.

This is pretty interesting. A long, long time ago I posted a note suggesting that most folks buying a pickup truck are not buying them to haul things or tow things. 

Note above, repeating, the important part in red in case it was missed the first time:

Price, performance, design, and size matter the most to potential EV truck customerswhile the brand name and work use were the least important.

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Today's Market Action

Wow, talk about excitement when the market dropped 600 points today. 

This is what the 600-point plunge looked like to some:

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Microsoft

Has anyone noticed no one sues Microsoft for stealing any patented innovations? Apple? Gets sued all the time. LOL. Racial equity and justice initiative. 

By the way, this is huge and I would not have known about it except for the fact my high school granddaughters told me this was a "big deal" in their government classes: "equity, equitable, and equality" all have very different meanings. I thought about that when I saw Apple using "racial equity" rather than "racial equality." 

Whatever. 

Whatever I think of Apple, every time I hear / see the word "Microsoft," I see this graphic: