Young people hit hardest, most worried about inflation: Nanos
Nanos Research founder Nik Nanos on new findings showing young Canadians are pessimistic about their future amid rising living costs.
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CTV News
an hour ago
- CTV News
Greener steel arrives in Canada to a market in turmoil and future unclear
Steam rises as water is poured over hot steel at Algoma's Direct Strip Production Complex in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., on Wednesday, March 14, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang TORONTO — Like some superhero channelling the power of lightning, Algoma Steel Inc. has started using the heat cast off by the arcs of powerful electric currents to make greener steel. Electric arc furnaces are nothing new — the technology is more than a century old, and there's already a few in Canada — but Algoma is calling the achievement of production from its first of the kind furnace last month a win as it faces an existential threat from U.S. tariffs. 'We have reached a truly pivotal milestone for Algoma and the Canadian steel industry,' said chief executive Michael Garcia on a recent earnings call. 'Despite the uncertainty that the trade war has unleashed, this achievement reinforces our confidence in our transformation strategy.' Part of that strategy has been to dramatically reduce emissions in an attempt to differentiate its products; it even trademarked Volta as the name for its cleaner steel that it plans to produce from a mix of low-emission iron feed and scrap metal. But experts say the project is coming online as the market for green steel, and the metal more generally, faces turmoil from tariffs and price pressures, making it unclear what financial advantages producers may get from the big upfront investments needed. 'The question is, will the demand be there? Is there going to be sufficient demand in North America for green steel?' said Chris Bataille, who researches the steel transition as an adjunct research fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. 'The U.S. was starting to move fairly quickly in terms of moving to electric vehicles and to cleaner steel and everything else under the last administration, but now we've got a complete U-turn.' Steel emissions had been a priority in the U.S., and remains one in Canada, because using coal to produce steel is so emissions intensive. Globally, steel production makes up about eight per cent of carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. But while it makes sense from an emissions perspective, buyers willing to pay a premium for the more eco-friendly steel have mostly been limited to the auto sector, said Bataille. European automakers have been paying a premium of as much as 40 per cent for the cleaner material, since they can use it for marketing while only adding a little to the end cost of a car, but the more important building sector has been more hesitant, he said. There is still demand in Europe, a region Canada has looked to diversify its exports, but with tariffs causing disruption there too it's not clear how much potential there is, said trade expert Tommaso Ferretti. 'There is a structural demand in Europe, but to what extent that structural demand will remain in place, it's a big question mark,' said the assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management. Garcia himself has warned that Algoma doesn't see much potential to sell to Europe, or anywhere else internationally. 'We can put our steel on an ocean-going ship here in Sault Ste. Marie, but getting it to an export customer in Europe or elsewhere, there just aren't those opportunities right now. I don't think that there'll be a lot of those opportunities going forward, to be frank,' he said. The challenges help explain why the other flagship green steel project in Canada, at ArcelorMittal's Hamilton, Ont., operations, is stuck in neutral. The company made a big show of announcing in 2022 that it was moving ahead with a $1.8-billion project to move to green steel — but the last updates show the project is still at the engineering stage, with a spokesperson confirming there are no new milestones to report. Wider oversupply issues in the industry that have pushed down prices is part of the problem, as are doubts about policies like carbon pricing, said Bataille. 'There's some uncertainty about how fast the transition will go. ... It's just a difficult business to make a buck, to be honest.' ArcelorMittal said in its latest sustainability report in April that it doesn't expect green steel projects to be economical until the 2030s, and that policies will be needed to address the high capital and operational costs. Federal and provincial governments in Canada have already stepped in to help out with capital costs. Algoma received $420 million to help cover the more than $880 million cost of its project, while ArcelorMittal was offered $900 million to help ease its overall costs. But unlike Algoma, ArcelorMittal's plans also include building a plant in Hamilton to remove oxygen from iron ore using hydrogen, rather than coal — a process that remains expensive, leading to several recent project cancellations. ArcelorMittal itself just cancelled two green steel projects in Germany in June, citing high electricity prices, while last year it noted the future of several other of its European steel projects is unclear because 'there is limited willingness among customers to pay premiums for low-carbon emissions steel.' Cleveland-Cliffs, which bought Hamilton-based Stelco Holdings Inc. last year, recently shelved plans for green steel conversion at a U.S. plant that already had US$500 million in government funding secured. Lourenco Goncalves, chief executive of Cleveland-Cliffs, cited the lack of clear hydrogen supply as part of the reason for cancelling the project. He said on a July earnings call that plans to revamp the operation using existing resources, including 'beautiful coal,' generates a very good conversation with the current U.S. Department of Energy. Ferretti worries that the pressures the industry is facing will also mean less investment in research and development to try and bring costs down. He said there needs to be even greater collaboration between the public and private sector for the critical industry to chart a path forward. 'The real question in fact is to see … the collaboration between the companies, the steel manufacturers, Canadian government, and their ability to reinvent themselves.' For Bataille, that path could include using Canada's vast renewable energy and iron ore deposits to build a direct reduction plant for processing closer to the source, and then shipping the already oxygen-reduced iron around the world. 'You could triple the value of those exports,' said Bataille. 'So on the one hand we face headwinds and the Chinese overcapacity continues, but on the other hand, I think there's new possibilities open in shipping green iron places that, you know, we hadn't considered before.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug 10, 2025. Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Regina couple's app teaches mindfulness to break the cycle of addiction
It began with moments of personal reflection. Adam Geiger had been battling a gambling addiction since he was a teenager. "I think it started innocently enough, with things like video games and whatnot," Geiger said. "Looking back, I remember myself being very anxious, always really trapped in my mind thinking of what other people thought of me." After decades of struggle, mindfulness and meditation helped him shift gears, allowing him to explore not just his behaviour, but the thoughts beneath it. "Looking at the nature of thought and what was going on, sort of beneath the surface level stuff," he said. In 2024, he and his partner Chelsea Galloway two decided to build a digital tool to support others facing similar struggles. "I think Adam and I both had this opportunity at the time to really be able to put ourselves into something that mattered to us personally," Galloway said. A year and a half later, their vision became reality with the launch of AlchemistOne, a mindfulness-focused recovery app designed to support people dealing with addictions. A shared mission born from experience Geiger's journey to AlchemistOne began decades ago, when an innocent love of video games and sports grew to compulsive gambling. "I made my first sports bet when I was 13 or 14," he said. "All those thoughts went away and it was very easy for me to escape into gambling." Temporary relief came with long-term consequences. Geiger said he spent more 20 years locked in a cycle of gambling addiction. Once he finally broke that cycle, the app seemed like a perfect opportunity to help others do the same. Galloway, the company's COO, brought both personal insight and business expertise to the project. "Addiction was just something that was really present in our lives," she said. "Adam had a really strong tech background. I had a pretty strong business background. So we came together to build the company." The pair spent months designing what would become AlchemistOne. What started as a two-person initiative now includes six full-time team members and a growing community of close to 6,000 downloads worldwide. A 3-pillar approach Geiger said that at its core, AlchemistOne is built around three key pillars of recovery: Mindfulness and meditation. Active reflection. Physical movement. Users can access a library of audio content, including guided meditations, podcast-style interviews and personal stories from people around the world who are in recovery. Geiger acknowledged an irony in people using the same phone or tablet that accessed gambling sites, social media or other addictive content as a tool for recovery. Instead of turning to a casino app or a harmful distraction, users can open AlchemistOne and engage in a quick mindfulness session. "I think often our phones and our computers are the things that we use to escape into and keeps us a lot of trouble," he said. "We definitely wanted to build that daily companion that lived in that same space that you maybe had some trouble before." Since the launch in April 2025, the response has been swift and steady the pair says. "It's really exciting that we see new members every five or 10 minutes jumping into the app and signing up," Galloway said. For both founders, the real win isn't downloads, it's impact. "We're getting that feedback from people who are saying, you know, this is resonating with me," Galloway said. "It's complicated, it's complex. And if we can just bring something to the table that helps people get through their day and potentially helps long lasting recovery, that's really the end goal."
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
This AI Stock Just Hit a 52-Week Low -- Here's Why That's an Opportunity
Key Points Confluent recently hit a 52-week low, as investors were not impressed by management's latest guidance. However, the company is growing at a brisk pace and building a solid revenue pipeline. An increase in AI-focused workloads should pave the way for stronger growth at Confluent, and its valuation makes it worth buying right now. 10 stocks we like better than Confluent › Data streaming platform provider Confluent (NASDAQ: CFLT) saw a sharp drop in its share price this year, which was blamed on slowing growth. Things went from bad to worse following the release of the company's latest quarterly results. Confluent reported its second-quarter results on July 30. The stock shed almost a third of its value the following day and also touched a 52-week low on Aug. 1. Investors were quick to press the panic button despite Confluent's better-than-expected results, as management's guidance didn't inspire much confidence. Savvy investors looking to buy a potential artificial intelligence (AI) winner should consider using Confluent's dip as a buying opportunity. Here's why. AI could give Confluent a nice shot in the arm Confluent reported a 20% year-over-year increase in its revenue in the previous quarter to just over $282 million. Its earnings growth was even more impressive at 50%, to $0.09 per share. Confluent management remarked on the latest earnings conference call that it is navigating a tight spending environment. The company, which operates a cloud-based data streaming platform to store, access, connect, and manage customers' data and applications in real time, says that its growth was hindered by customers' "optimization" initiatives. According to CEO Jay Kreps: In Q2, our larger customers continued their optimization efforts and adopted new use cases in a more measured pace. While we are confident that this elevated level of optimization will eventually subside, our outlook for the second half assumes consumption growth notably below what we've seen in the same period of prior years. Unsurprisingly, investors were spooked by this forecast of slowing sales growth in the second half of the year. But at the same time, one shouldn't forget that Confluent has slightly increased the lower end of its 2025 revenue guidance. What's more, the company's future revenue pipeline is improving at a brisk pace despite the controlled spending by customers. This is evident from the 31% increase in its remaining performance obligations (RPO) in the previous quarter. RPO is the total value of a company's unfulfilled contracts at the end of a period. This metric grew at a much faster pace than the growth in Confluent's top line. That's good news, as the faster growth in Confluent's revenue backlog should allow it to eventually increase its growth rate in the future once it starts fulfilling the contracts that it's signing now. Meanwhile, the company expects a big boost from the adoption of AI services in the cloud. Confluent says that it saw an increase in the number of customers using its data streaming platform to support real-time AI workloads such as agentic AI applications, code generation, content creation, chatbots, and others. In fact, Confluent says that it expects "production AI use cases to grow 10x across a few hundred customers" in 2025. The company cited several examples where customers around the globe are using its data streaming solutions to build AI agents capable of handling real-time queries. Looking ahead, there's a good chance that more customers could flock to Confluent's cloud-based platform, thanks to the sharp increase that it's predicting in real-time AI use cases. This explains why analysts expect an improvement in Confluent's earnings growth rate in the future. Data by YCharts. The valuation makes the stock an attractive buy The sharp drop in Confluent's stock price this year explains why it is trading at an attractive 5 times sales right now, less than half its average five-year sales multiple. Moreover, Confluent stock trades at a discount to the U.S. technology sector's average sales multiple of 8.4. Investors can consider buying Confluent at this discounted multiple, since it is clocking a healthy revenue growth rate despite controlled customer spending. Analysts also expect its top line to grow in the mid-teens for the next couple of years, though don't be surprised to see Confluent doing better than that, given the pace at which its revenue backlog is improving. Data by YCharts. If the company indeed manages to outpace Wall Street's revenue expectations over the next couple of years, the market could reward it with a higher sales multiple. That could pave the way for healthy stock price upside. Even if Confluent's revenue increases to $1.57 billion in 2027 (as per the previous chart) and it trades at even 7 times sales at that time (a discount to the U.S. technology sector's average), its market cap could hit $11 billion. That would be an increase of 86% from current levels. So, investors looking for an AI stock that's cheap and is trading at an attractive valuation should take a closer look at Confluent, as it seems capable of stepping on the gas in the long run. Should you invest $1,000 in Confluent right now? Before you buy stock in Confluent, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Confluent wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,119,863!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025
