fbpx

Weekly Cache

Weekly Investment News and Analysis

Please see what we’ve been reading in technology and ESG related investing this week. Please feel free to send us what you’ve found interesting.

Latest Investment News

February 02, 2025: Making Volatility Great Again

Last week, Dow Jones was up 0.3%, S&P 500 lost 1%, and Nasdaq was down 1.6%. The week was especially volatile, AI plays were down Monday on DeepSeek concerns, and then had a strong week, until US tariff developments sent stocks down again Friday afternoon. Nvidia, Broadcom and Marvell and other U.S. firms that design AI chips each fell more than 17% Monday, Apple, however rose 3% — as some market participants suggested the DeepSeek model bodes well for on-device light LLMs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the tech giant would invest “very heavily” in AI — even “hundreds of billions of dollars” — over the long term, during Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday. OpenAI is in talks with SoftBank to raise US$40 billion in a new funding at around a US$300 billion post-money valuation. Microsoft is one of the companies in talks to acquire TikTok’s US operations, President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. A decision on TikTok’s future in the US is expected in 30 days. In Canada, Sophic Client, Legend Power Systems closed the final tranche of its Non-Brokered Private Placement, raising a total of $1.6 million. Sophic Client, Plurilock closed an Over-Subscribed Special Warrant Offering, for gross proceeds of nearly $5 million. Sophic Client American Aires announced record preliminary Q4/2024 performance & provided 2025 guidance. Cash and Inventory Balances were a record $6.5 million. Management expects 2025 sales in the $28 million to $32 million range, and EBITDA in the range of a $2 million loss to a $2 million profit. From January 1 through January 24, order volumes grew 111% y/y. Q4/2024 set yet another quarterly record with $8.8 million in sales, up 135% y/y. Additionally, Sophic Clients, Cybeats, Legend Power and Plurilock, all announced progress in their respective businesses.

Invesment News in the Past Weeks

October 11, 2020

October 11, 2020

After around 15 years of covering Canadian technology stocks, we’re very encouraged to begin see an increasing number of high quality Canadian companies go public or consider going public, which enables average investors to benefit from innovation driven wealth creation. In this regard, we’ve recently seen news pertaining to BBTV, Cymax and Nuvei.

October 04, 2020

October 04, 2020

Last week saw healthy levels of financing across the Canadian tech ecosystem, in both public and private markets. South of the border, Roblox should be an interesting stock to watch out for. Newsflow seems to be focused more on regulatory issues, and the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Twitter are expected to testify to the U.S. Senate before the election.

September 27, 2020

September 27, 2020

IPO activity in the USA cooled a bit after a few heated weeks, while M&A kept chugging along. In Canada, publicly listed technology companies announed ~$85 million in bought deals.

September 20, 2020

September 20, 2020

It’s great to see Nuvei have a successful IPO on the TSX last week — we believe robust IPOs are a very important part of the Canadian public markets ecosystem, even as US capital markets rediscover SPACs. Canadian VC also reported strong activity.

September 13, 2020

September 13, 2020

Lots of activity in the Canadian VC space this past week, as well as Lightspeed’s NYSE debut. Sophic client, Kontrol (KNR-CSE) had positive news of another successful test of its Covid detection product, BioCloud.

September 6, 2020

September 6, 2020

We hope you’re enjoying the long weekend with your loved ones. Many high growth stocks pulled back on Thursday, and Friday to some extent – however, valuations still remain elevated. Interestingly a Financial Times piece on Friday suggested Softbank’s option trading could have been tech stocks higher over the summer.

August 30, 2020

August 30, 2020

Monday saw the one the highest number of SEC S-1 filings for high profile companies going public as we have seen in nearly fifteen years in capital markets. September, should be a very interesting month!

August 23, 2020

August 23, 2020

While the Tik-Tok drama continues to unfold, high profile companies including SpaceX, Robinhood, Airbnb, Ant Financial, Palantir move ahead to either raise capital or go public. Palantir also plans to move its headquarters from the Bay Area to Denver, which could aid the trend of tech companies being more widely located, which we believe is a tailwind for the Canadian tech ecosystem. For example, Odyssey Interactive’s founders previously worked in the United States but opted to establish the company in Canada, because of the strong startup ecosystem in Canada.

August 16, 2020

August 16, 2020

Epic Games and Facebook appear to be pushing back against app store policies, which could have far reaching implications. Several high profile companies are expected to go public this fall & Robinhood is garnering lots of attention (including, gracing the cover of this week’s Barrons).

August 9, 2020

August 9, 2020

Lots of attention seems to be focused on US-China tensions and ramifications for the global technology industry, with Twitter and TikTok apparently in discussions as of Saturday. It will be interesing to see what the next week brings on this front.

August 2, 2020

August 2, 2020

Please see what we’ve been reading in technology and ESG related investing this week. Please feel free to send us what you’ve found interesting.

July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020

Welcome to our inaugural edition of what we’ve been reading in technology & ESG related investing this week. You are receiving this email, because you’ve previously worked with Sophic Capital or we’ve discussed tech or ESG investing.