Latest news with #Proto
Mint
29-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Hedge Funds Return to Sohn Hong Kong After Mixed Year for Bets
(Bloomberg) -- After a tumultuous 12 months, it's no small achievement that the Sohn investment conference returns to Hong Kong on Friday with the better half of last year's picks having made money. Hedge fund managers will present their ideas at the Sohn Hong Kong Investment Leaders Conference as financial markets gyrate, with global growth and supply chains under threat and geopolitics mired in escalating tensions. It was against this unfolding backdrop that some of last year's investment ideas generated handsome returns, while others failed to pay off. Below are the winners and losers from the May 23, 2024 event. The call: Kaname Capital co-founder Toby Rodes last year argued there was room to increase shareholder value at the Japanese second-hand car listing platform. He called on its chairman to stop pursuing low-quality acquisitions including a basketball team, a hamburger chain and strawberry farms. Rodes pushed for a more independent board and a structure where the founder owns the company but doesn't control operations. The outcome: It was last year's best-performing idea. Kaname engaged with Proto's independent directors and seized on the share price decline to build up a stake that peaked at 8.5%, Rodes said. Proto's chairman decided to take it private through a management buyout. Kaname balked at the tender offer price as being too low. Following extensions to the offer deadline, Proto is on track to be privatized 59% above the closing price on the day of last year's event. The call: CloudAlpha Capital Management founding partner Chris Wang made a bullish call on the power machinery maker, saying electricity distributors and equipment makers stand to benefit from artificial intelligence developments. The South Korean company traded at a discount to global peers, he said, touting a potential 100% upside. The outcome: The stock has jumped 50% in the past 12 months. Wang credited efforts made between 2022 and 2023 to improve organizational efficiency and to strategically shift toward higher-end electric equipment. That prepared it well for the demand surge from the AI boom, leading to strong earnings growth in the past year. 'The success story of Hyundai Electric once again proves that opportunities favor those who are prepared,' Wang wrote in an email. The call: The South Korean company was trading at just three times forward earnings because the market failed to price in the value of its core subsidiary, DN Solutions Co., a leading machine tool maker. Hidden value could be unlocked through a planned initial public offering of the unit within a year, said Darren Kang, chief investment officer of Life Asset Management. The outcome: The stock surged 40% in the past year. DN Solutions' $1.1 billion IPO, billed as potentially the largest in Seoul this year, was shelved in late April, after President Donald Trump's tariff policies triggered a market selloff. Still, the aborted share sale 'brought broader attention to the group's under-valuation,' Kang said in an email. 'The upside could have been greater had the listing gone ahead as planned.' The call: Ecuador's sovereign bonds traded at large discounts to peers, said Aaron Stern, managing partner of Converium Capital. The new administration was ushering in economic changes and social reforms that he expected to unlock financing from the International Monetary Fund. The country had a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than peers. It also faced less pressure from credit maturing, thanks to debt restructuring a few years ago. The outcome: The price of the 2035 bond that Stern touted has surged around 24%. When including the semiannual 5.5% coupons, the total return is about 34% in the past year, he said in an email. The call: The provider of human resources and business support services to Japanese companies was trading at a sizable discount to peers, said Zennor Asset Management LLP founding partner David Mitchinson. It had a track record of organic growth, yet its goals weren't ambitious enough and it could benefit from a coherent capital strategy, he said. The outcome: The stock edged up 3.6% in the past year, which left Mitchinson to 'hope for rather better' in time. Government contracts it won during Covid rolled off, while tepid China growth has also been a drag in recent years. But organic growth is finally picking up again, and the company has improved disclosure and its shareholder return policy, he said. Still, it's being run with a lot of cash and more group restructuring is needed, he added. The call: Oasis Management's Seth Fischer highlighted the drugmaker as an activist opportunity in Japan, where its recalled red yeast health supplements led to scores of deaths and hospitalizations. Fischer laid out three options for Kobayashi: bolster board oversight and shareholder returns, go private, or work with Oasis to improve governance. The outcome: The stock slipped another 8.2% since last year's event. Kobayashi's move to fix governance flaws 'is still a work in progress,' said Fischer. A motion in March to appoint an independent chairman was thwarted by the founding family. Having amassed a 10% stake, Oasis filed a lawsuit in April against current and former Kobayashi directors. While it wants an independent probe into the scandal, an encouraging sign is that the management and shareholders are now aligned against the founding family, Fischer said. With legal liability mounting, he's optimistic this will have a successful conclusion. The call: Japan Catalyst Inc. President Taro Hirano saw potential to generate more value in the company, whose businesses ranged from electric-vehicle battery pouches to bottling services for Coca-Cola Co. Japan's corporate management style, with employees often staying for life and chief executives picked in-house, made firms reluctant to divest assets, Hirano said. The outcome: The stock has fallen almost 10%. Dai Nippon's intrinsic value is 'still in the process of being recognized by the market,' Hirano said in an email. Revelations in November that Elliott Investment Management had significantly cut its position less than two years after building a stake contributed to the stock price decline. The call: Palliser Capital founder James Smith urged the mining giant to consider dropping its primary listing in London and unify its corporate structure in Australia. Palliser in December publicly called on the Rio Tinto board to begin an 'independent, comprehensive and transparent' review into the matter, saying the dual listing has led to about $50 billion in value destruction for shareholders since its inception. The outcome: The stock retreated about 21% in London trading and 15% in Australia over the past year. Both still beat the 23% decline of the Bloomberg EMEA 500 Metals and Mining Index. Singapore futures on iron ore, Rio Tinto's cash cow product, have fallen 20% since last year's event as demand from China dropped. Even with the backing of key proxy advisers, Palliser failed to win enough shareholder support to force the review, which Rio Tinto said would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, Palliser is holding out hope that a leadership transition later this year would act as a catalyst for structural reform, parallel to events before the collapse of a dual listing for BHP Group Ltd. in 2022. The call: Tybourne Capital Management CIO Eashwar Krishnan said the stock price could more than double in three years, as the growing adoption of AI drives demand for the company's memory chips. Integrating advanced AI features on devices such as mobile phones would spur demand for DRAM memory, he said. The outcome: Krishnan didn't respond to messages seeking comment. The stock slumped 28% since last year's event, after hitting a high in July. Samsung hasn't secured certification from Nvidia Corp. for the supply of the most advanced AI chips, allowing rivals, especially SK Hynix Inc., to grab a larger share of the market for high-bandwidth memory that AI accelerators depend on. 'Industry-wise, AI is growing, but the benefit went to SK Hynix, instead of Samsung,' Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Masahiro Wakasugi said. More stories like this are available on
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
BNP Paribas Exane Upgrades Block (XYZ) Stock to Outperform
On May 27, BNP Paribas Exane upped Block, Inc. (NYSE:XYZ)'s stock to 'Outperform' from 'Neutral' with a price objective of $72, as reported by The Fly. As per the analyst, Block, Inc. (NYSE:XYZ)'s guidance for a mid-teens growth acceleration in gross profit for Q4 2025 is achievable, with challenges including competitive pressures in bitcoin and the cash business starting to fade. Furthermore, the acceleration expected in H2 2025 is projected to align with regular business operations. The introduction of the Borrow product and the Proto launch have been tagged as potential growth catalysts. The company expects Block topline growth to accelerate from a low point in H1 2025 to the mid-teens in Q4 2025. Block, Inc. (NYSE:XYZ) believes that improvements in Cash App gross profit are expected to be the primary driver of the overall acceleration in Block topline. However, there are expectations to see faster growth in Square and the first gross profit contributions from Proto, as the company delivers its first chips and systems in H2 2025. Block, Inc. (NYSE:XYZ) expects the enhancements to Cash App Borrow to fuel gross profit growth with the help of increased originations and improved unit economics. While we acknowledge the potential of XYZ to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than XYZ and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 13 Cheap AI Stocks to Buy According to Analysts and 11 Unstoppable Growth Stocks to Invest in Now Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Coin Geek
14-05-2025
- Business
- Coin Geek
BTC miners' Q1 results awash in red ink (we hope it's ink)
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Block reward miners took it on the chin in the first quarter of 2025, laid low by economic tariffs, falling BTC prices and record-high mining difficulty. On May 12, Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) announced that its new Trump-linked subsidiary, American Bitcoin Corporation (ABC), had made plans to go public on the Nasdaq exchange via a stock-for-stock merger agreement with Nasdaq-listed Gryphon Digital Mining. As previously announced, ABC will trade under the ABTC ticker once the deal closes (likely sometime in Q3). According to documents detailing the deal, ABC's existing shareholders, including chief strategy officer Eric Trump, will own 98% of the merged entity. While ABC will continue to mine using the rigs that were effectively donated by Hut 8, ABC aims to become 'a publicly traded vehicle for low-cost Bitcoin accumulation at scale.' In other words, yet another BTC 'treasury' vessel, albeit one that boasts the son of the President of the United States in its executive ranks. Block reward miners haven't had the easiest time since Donald Trump took his oath of office for the second time in January. Economic tariffs, particularly those imposed on China, have led to uncertainty regarding miners' ability to secure the latest mining rigs, nearly all of which are designed and built by Chinese companies. This week's announcement of a 90-day cease-fire (of sorts) on the U.S./China tariff front has offered miners a temporary reprieve from the uncertainty surrounding the gear they rely on to run their businesses. However, the truce was both non-binding and feather-light on specifics, meaning miners could find themselves back behind the 8-ball should the two nations fail to reach a more tangible understanding of how global trade will work going forward. The tariff threat has convinced some mining rig manufacturers to establish U.S. operations, including Singapore-based Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR), which claims to be on track to launch its U.S.-based production site in the second half of 2025. Jack Dorsey's payment processing company, Block (NASDAQ: SQ), announced plans to get into the mining rig manufacturing business a few years ago and last November announced the launch of Proto, its new dedicated mining division. Proto promised to shake up a hardware market 'currently dominated by one company that has overwhelming market share, and a couple other players—all of whom operate from a single country.' Speaking to analysts this month following Block's Q1 report, Dorsey emphasized that Proto was 'building in the United States' and will deliver its 'first chips and systems' later this year. Last summer, Proto inked a deal with Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ), which made a $21 million prepayment to Block for the new rigs in January. Earnings (mostly negative) The first quarter of 2025 wasn't kind to miners, as the Q1 earnings reports of some publicly traded players vividly illustrate. Trump's second presidency was expected to usher in a new 'crypto' golden age, but his tariff tactics left miners struggling to stay out of the red. Worse, the BTC token's fiat price peaked at nearly $109,000 on the day of his inauguration but closed out the quarter around $82,500. Meanwhile, the mining difficulty rate spent much of the quarter at all-time highs, wreaking havoc on mining economics. It wasn't until earlier this month that miners finally caught a break, and difficulty fell 3.3% following four consecutive increases. Perhaps no Q1 report better reflects this situation than Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT), which reported a net loss of $296.4 million in the three months ending March 31, a sharp reversal from the nearly $212 million profit Riot enjoyed in Q1 2024. The loss came despite Riot's revenue doubling year-on-year to a record $161.4 million and a $208 million accounting change in the fair value of the over 19,000 BTC that Riot has amassed in its 'treasury.' Riot's Q1 report was accompanied by news that the company had sold 475 BTC in April for $38.8 million, its first major sale of BTC in over a year. Riot CEO Jason Les justified the sale as a 'strategic decision … to fund ongoing growth and operations … These sales reduce the need for equity fundraising, limiting the amount of dilution in our stock.' The only miner with a bigger BTC treasury than Riot is MARA (NASDAQ: MARA), which reported a Q1 net loss of $533.4 million, of which $510 million was a negative adjustment in the value of the 47,531 BTC tokens on its balance sheet. (Reminder: much of MARA's treasury was bought with borrowed cash.) BTC's falling value spoiled MARA's 30% year-on-year revenue rise to $214 million, and MARA was keen for investors to understand that BTC has staged a price comeback since Q1 ended. And hey, all that economic chaos will never happen again, right? RIGHT? CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) lost nearly $139 million in Q1, a 180° shift from the $126.7 million profit in the same period last year. The loss came despite mining revenue rising $70 million year-on-year to $181.7 million, as the cost of generating those revenues also shot skyward. CleanSpark bills itself as 'the only remaining pure-play, public bitcoin miner,' but that humble-brag is starting to read more like a cautionary label these days. The aforementioned Hut 8 reported a net loss of $134.3 million as mining costs soared. But never fear, as CEO Asher Genoot said the net loss was 'a deliberate and necessary phase of investment,' the returns from which 'will become increasingly visible in the quarters ahead.' TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) reported a net loss of $61.4 million as revenue fell by one-fifth year-on-year to $34.4 million. Terawulf's cost of revenue as a share of revenue more than doubled year-on-year to 71.4% as power costs per self-mined BTC more than quadrupled. Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) bucked Q1's downward trend, reporting net income of $580 million, although this was entirely due to $621.5 million in non-cash adjustments to its debt warrants (thanks to the 'significant' decrease in Core's share price). Meanwhile, Core's revenue fell by more than one-half to $79.5 million, leading to an operating loss of $42.6 million versus a $55.2 million positive result in Q1 2024. Core is in the process of realigning its business away from mining to high-performance computing (HPC) hosting, aka 'colocation' in Core's verbiage. Core CEO Adam Sullivan called Q1 'an inflection point' as the company refocuses on more predictable revenue from AI data center operations, while warning of short-term revenue hits as the mining rigs are switched off. Back to the top ↑ April: the cruelest month As usual, the April 2025 production reports of publicly traded miners are listed below in descending order of magnitude. (Note that the laggards at Core, Hut 8 and BIT Mining (NYSE: BTCM) had yet to issue their April figures at the time this was written.) MARA produced 705 BTC in April, a 15% decline from March, despite hashrate growing 5.5% month-on-month. MARA CEO Fred Thiel blamed the decline on an 8% month-on-month mining difficulty rise and global hashrate having 'its second largest monthly gain on record.' MARA sold none of its BTC last month, bumping its total treasury up to 48,327 tokens. CleanSpark mined 633 BTC in April, down from 706 in March. The company sold 401 BTC last month, bringing its total BTC holdings at month's end to 12,101. April also saw CleanSpark secure a $200 million credit facility from the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange in what CEO Zach Bradford called 'part of our broader strategic approach to capital management.' This will see CleanSpark 'evolve from a nearly 100% [BTC] hold strategy adopted in mid-2023 and move back to using a portion of our monthly production to support operations.' Iris Energy (NASDAQ: IREN) bucked the downward trend by mining 579 BTC in April, up from 533 in March, thanks to a corresponding 20% rise in hashrate. The company's AI Cloud Services unit was also increasing, generating $2 million in revenue in April, up from $1.6 million in March (and $1.2 million in February). While the AI revenue is still a fraction of mining's haul ($50 million), the company appears pleased with AI's current trajectory. IREN co-CEO Daniel Roberts also said the company is using the 90-day tariff pause to import mining rigs from Southeast Asia and hopes to boost IREN's current hashrate of 36.6 EH/s to 50 EH/s 'within the next two months.' The Shanghai-based Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) is a newcomer to this list, having only begun mining last November. In March, Cango sold its mainstay automotive sales platform to Ursalpha Digital Limited—reportedly an affiliate of dominant mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain, from whom Cango got its first batch of mining rigs—to focus solely on mining. Cango mined 470 BTC in April, down from 530 in March, but this boosted Cango's BTC treasury to 2,945 tokens. Cango already boasts operations in Canada, the U.S., Paraguay, East Africa and Oman, with a total deployed hashrate of 32 EH/s as of April 30. Riot mined 463 BTC in April, 70 fewer than in March, and remember that Riot sold 475 BTC last month. Riot might have needed to sell even more BTC had not its 'credits' (aka money paid by state governments to not mine BTC to spare overloaded electricity grids) more than doubled from March to $2 million. Good not-work if you can get it. mine BTC to spare overloaded electricity grids) more than doubled from March to $2 million. Good not-work if you can get it. Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF) earned 268 BTC in April, slightly off March's record 280 tokens. However, the company's BTC treasury slipped from 1,140 at the end of March to 1,005 by the end of April, indicating that it too was selling tokens faster than they were coming in. Cipher Mining (NASDAQ: CIFR) claimed 174 BTC in April, down from 210 in March, which the company blamed on a three-day planned shutdown at its Odessa, TX facility. Cipher also sold 350 BTC in April, more than the 206 it sold in March, reducing its treasury to just 855 tokens. Cipher's Q1 report showed revenue of $49 million and a net loss of $39 million, so sell 'em while you got 'em. Bitdeer self-mined 166 BTC in April, up 45.6% from March's total, as the company's new in-house Sealminer rigs continue to come online. Bitdeer recently paused mining-related construction at its Clarington, Ohio site 'due to advancing discussions with multiple development partners and end users for HPC/AI.' Bitdeer says it can reassess and resume the mining build-out at a later date should these HPC/AI talks not progress to its satisfaction. Hive Digital (TSXV: HIVE) earned 102 BTC in April, down slightly from March's 108, despite a 10% hashrate increase thanks to its new Paraguay operations (including a site recently acquired from Bitfarms). The Bitmain-affiliated BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU) self-mined 36 BTC in April, down from 58 in March. Cloud-mining customers collected another 173 BTC, only three fewer than March's total. Counting inflow from customer payments, BitFuFu's treasury added 66 BTC in April, bringing its total to 1,908 tokens. Back to the top ↑ Miners behaving badly President Trump promised miners ample supplies of cheap energy to power their operations, leading to last month's flurry of executive orders that rolled back environmental restraints on energy production. But not all miners are repaying these favors by behaving as proper stewards of the land on which they operate. Case in point: a mining operation at a natural gas fracking site in rural Pennsylvania shut down abruptly at some point this year, and the company (Diversified Energy) appears to have failed to plug the on-site well that fueled their mining rigs, which the company also removed from the site without informing officials, violating local laws in the process. Diversified claims it's all a big misunderstanding, and that it plans to resume pulling gas from the 'Longhorn Pad A' well at some future point. But Diversified has been accused of similar abandonments across other Appalachian states, recently reaching a class-action settlement in West Virginia to plug some 3,000 wells by 2034. Pennsylvanians fear that Diversified is only maintaining the illusion of continuing operations to avoid the estimated $100,000+ cost of sealing this particular well and many others like it across the state, sticking taxpayers with the tab. Diversified has a history of cutting regulatory corners, including launching its Longhorn Pad A mining operations in 2022 before it had secured the necessary permits. True to its name, Diversified announced plans in March to team up with two other firms to deliver 'reliable, cost efficient, net-zero power from natural gas and captured coal mine methane to meet the soaring demand of data centers for reliable power.' When some large language model is learning about Diversified, the company better hope that the LLM isn't trained on Appalachian social media feeds. Back to the top ↑ Watch: Bringing the Metanet to life with Teranode title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="">
Time Magazine
08-05-2025
- Health
- Time Magazine
David Nussbaum
Communications startup Proto Hologram could have stuck with broadcasting holograms of celebrities into places like concerts and airports; instead, founder David Nussbaum brought the technology to health care. The Los Angeles-based company now beams holograms of real doctors to clinics in rural areas, helping cut down on travel time while ensuring patients get a more realistic image of their provider during virtual appointments. Nussbaum is the driving force behind Proto, touted as the world's first holographic communications platform, which was certified HIPAA compliant this spring. 'Nothing is more important than connecting with your doctor in person to create that emotional, physical connection, especially when you're talking about something as important as cancer or Parkinson's or some life altering news,' he says. Proto also offers translation services into nearly 300 languages, making it possible for doctors to talk to foreign-language-speaking patients without an interpreter. Nussbaum envisions holograms becoming as ubiquitous as iPhones, and even being used in facilities like nursing homes so that older people can have realistic interactions with far away loved ones. When he started in the business, projecting a hologram could cost up to a million dollars, but as it develops he's bringing prices down: the first unit he sold was $90,000, and the current product runs $24,900 plus a $5,000 per year software fee. Nussbaum's goal, he says, is a consumer product that costs under $1,000 and that 'will essentially allow anybody, for any reason, to beam anywhere.'
Wall Street Journal
08-05-2025
- Science
- Wall Street Journal
‘Proto' Review: Ancient Speech, Carried Far
Roughly five millennia ago, a small band of nomads set out from their homeland around the Black Sea. On the wide-open grasslands of the steppe, they honed their skills as horsemen and herders and worshiped a god they called Father Sky. They neither erected great landmarks nor penned any texts. Yet their legacy persists, hidden within the words of the languages spoken by more than three billion people today. In 'Proto,' Laura Spinney details the centurieslong effort to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European (PIE), what linguists believe to be the mother tongue of a diverse constellation of languages from Sanskrit to Gaelic. Ms. Spinney, a journalist whose previous book, 'Pale Rider' (2017), charted the worldwide spread and cultural impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic, here demonstrates how the language of those humble, preliterate nomads radiated across the prehistoric world and how their myths and rituals may have helped sow the seeds of modern civilization. It's a comprehensive and at times dizzying account that draws from the latest archaeological and genetic research to craft a compelling portrait of a people thought lost to time. Thinkers from Dante to Leibniz had long noticed peculiar similarities among languages from far-flung places. But it wasn't until 1786, when William Jones, a British judge stationed in India, proposed a link among Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, that the idea of a common lingual ancestor was taken seriously. Since then, researchers have developed a hypothetical vocabulary for PIE that consists of about 1,600 word stems, which form the basis of many of our most common words. For example, 'daughter' in English, 'thugátēr' in Greek and 'duhitár' in Sanskrit are all believed to have been derived from a common PIE root that was transformed by local speech patterns over time. In this, Ms. Spinney sees 'a seam that connects east and west; a fiber stretched taut between them that thrums in all of us.' While it's not clear precisely why PIE was able to establish such a wide domain, Ms. Spinney suggests that commerce likely played a role. 'In all of recorded history,' she writes, 'you'd be hard-pressed to find a single example of human beings trading in high-value goods without an effective means of communication.' By 4500 B.C., commodities such as gold, copper and salt were moving along a vast trade network centered on the Black Sea. PIE may have first spread thanks to its association with these valuable luxuries.
