Eoin Treacy's view

A link to today's video commentary is posted in the Subscriber's Area. 

Some of the topics discussed include: rotation away from stay at home champions and into real world stuff, FTSE-100 breaks higher, Gold and silver strong, copper continued to hit new highs, oil steady, 

Kellogg shares rose as much as 3.9% to $65.50 premarket, which would be the highest intraday level since November, after the packaged food company surprised analysts with positive organic sales growth in the first quarter, vs expectations for a decline.

“K impressed this morning, as another large-cap food name tops revenue and profit expectations, partially driven by positive shipment timing and emerging market strength,” Jefferies analyst Rob Dickerson writes

Eoin Treacy's view

Commodities prices are running higher and that raises the question of how you can pass on higher costs to consumers. It’s the same old corn flakes or shredded wheat so you need to do something. Organics are a great way to do that. Fair trade is another rationale to charge more. Reusable packaging, different shaped packaging and substitution with additional ingredients all allow food producers to protect margins. During this bull market I fully except to see carbon footprint credentials printed on each individual box of food and that will be used as the rationale for price increases.

Silver primary supply set to recover in 2021, following Covid-19 operational restrictions suffered last year. 2020 saw the silver mining industry's biggest fall of the last decade, down 6% to 784 million ounce, based on Metals Focus data. Mined-output may rise by 8% year-over-year to 849 million ounces in 2021, based on Metals Focus estimates. We believe the Americas, with a 58% of global supply share, will lead the recovery in 2021, thanks to higher output from Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. Mexico could stay as the world's No. 2 producer, with nearly 200 million ounces, up 12% based on BI's scenario analysis.

Fresnillo kept its crown as world's No. 1 silver producing company in 2020, followed by KGHM, Glencore, Newmont and Codelco. We calculated that these miners combined represented 23% of global mined supply.

Eoin Treacy's view

Silver is mostly produced as a by-production of other mining activity and the majority of pureplay silver miners now concentrate on gold. Additionally, silver is more of an industrial resource than gold so it tends to elicit interest from many different sources. Those complicated supply and demand fundamentals mean significant new sources of supply or demand are required to meaningfully change the outlook for prices. The loss of photographic film demand was a major hit meanwhile the building boom in solar cells now accounts for 10% of total demand.  

Chip plants run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They do that for one reason: cost. Building an entry-level factory that produces 50,000 wafers per month costs about $15 billion. Most of this is spent on specialized equipment—a market that exceeded $60 billion in sales for the first time in 2020.

Three companies—Intel, Samsung and TSMC—account for most of this investment. Their factories are more advanced and cost over $20 billion each. This year, TSMC will spend as much as $28 billion on new plants and equipment. Compare that to the U.S. government’s attempt to pass a bill supporting domestic chip production. This legislation would offer just $50 billion over five years.

Once you spend all that money building giant facilities, they become obsolete in five years or less. To avoid losing money, chipmakers must generate $3 billion in profit from each plant. But now only the biggest companies, in particular the top three that combined generated $188 billion in revenue last year, can afford to build multiple plants.

Eoin Treacy's view

Semiconductor factories are largely automated so they were not particularly impacted by the global lockdowns. Demand for their products surged during the lockdowns. Factories running on thin margins and under constant threat from obsolescence do not operate with a lot of spare capacity. That is the primary reason we now have a semiconductor availability issue. The demand curve has accelerated well above the ability of supply to keep up. The increasing dependence of the automotive sector on chips has been building for a while and will contribute to the investment case for more supply. 

Eoin Treacy's view

One of the most commonly asked questions by subscribers is how to find details of my open traders. To make it easier I will simply repost the latest summary daily until there is a change.