James Passin, Founder & CEO, Biovaxys Technology (BVAXF)
James Passin is Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Biovaxys Technology (BVAXF), a Canadian company with a potential cure for ovarian cancer.
He is a former hedge fund and private equity fund manager at FGS Advisors, LLC, an affiliate of New York-based Firebird Management LLC. He has 20 years of experience as a professional investor, a deep experience of financing and developing venture-stage companies, and has directed and managed over $155 million of equity and debt investment into biotech companies including Avax Technologies, one of the world’s first cellular immunotherapeutic vaccine companies.
He is a director of several public companies, including TraceSafe (CSE:TSF) and BDSec JSC (MSE:BDS), and is a Chartered Market Technician and member of the CMT Association.
In this 3,223 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, James Passin, CEO of Biovaxys, makes some bold promises about his Canadian company’s promising therapy for ovarian cancer:
“Our lead product on the cancer side is a therapeutic cancer vaccine targeting ovarian cancer.
We partnered with a company based in Spain called Procare Health. Procare Health was spun out of Procter & Gamble in 2012. It’s a significant player in women’s health care in Europe.
Not only is Procare Health investing almost $1 million in-kind into our Phase I ovarian cancer trial, they’re going to do the trial for us. And in exchange, we’ve granted Procare Health exclusive marketing rights for the European Union and the U.K.
What’s very exciting about this technology is that the current version of the technology is just a modest but important change from the previous first generation of the technology that’s already been in the clinic under Dr. David Berd’s watch.
And in fact, there have been a number of FDA-approved trials of the first-generation vaccine, not only for ovarian cancer, but also for melanoma, which was based on Dr. Berd’s technology which involves what we call haptenization. We believe that we are the only biotechnology company in the world focusing on haptenization as a strategy for creating novel vaccines.
We’re going to be in the clinic in Europe in the second half of this year with our therapeutic ovarian cancer vaccine. We’re very excited about it because we think there’s a high probability that the trial will be successful.
But equally important, ovarian cancer is one of the top killers of women in terms of cancer.
Late-stage cancer diagnosis is often a death sentence. ”
The new ovarian cancer drug trial has an important distinction:
“On the cancer side, as I mentioned before, in terms of our ovarian cancer vaccine, Dr. Berd’s ovarian cancer vaccine already finished a Phase II trial.
We made a small but significant change.
The previous version of this vaccine had a single hapten, and we’re using what we call bi-haptenization which is two haptens. And really, the rationale is that a hapten is either hydrophilic or hydrophobic.
And by using one in each, the vaccine should interact with the entire cell. And so, that’s why we think that this is going to increase the immunogenicity of the vaccine.
In fact, whilst at the university, Dr. Berd did some human experiments with bi-haptenized vaccines. So we think that the bi-haptenization is really going to improve the vaccine.
But we already have the benefits of the previous human trials FDA-approved for ovarian cancer vaccine, not done by our company, but we have all the data.
So we think there’s a high probability that the trial is going to be successful because of the previous work that was done.
And as I said, there’s already been $130 million sunk into the technology with good results to show for it. So the knowledge we have in the company, in the trial construction and also in terms of the bio-production of the vaccine — like how to make it — all this know-how and knowledge is extraordinarily helpful, and it’s really a huge savings of cost and time.
So we feel that the trial has a high probability of success.
Obviously, there’s always risk involved in any experiment.”
Get the complete information about Biovaxys Technology (BVAXF) by reading the complete 3,223 word interview with James Passin, CEO, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Jay Venkatesan, CEO, Angion Biomedica (ANGN)
Jay Venkatesan, M.D., is the President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Angion Biomedica Corp.
Prior to Angion, Dr. Venkatesan served as President and Director of Alpine Immune Sciences (ALPN), which he co-founded as a Managing Partner of Alpine BioVentures.
Previously, Dr. Venkatesan was the founder and portfolio manager of Ayer Capital, a global health care fund.
Prior to that, he served as a director at Brookside Capital, part of Bain Capital, where he co-managed health care investments.
He was also a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and a venture investor with Patricof & Co. Ventures (now Apax Partners).
He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and his B.A. from Williams College.
In this 3,772 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Dr. Venkatesan details his company’s recovery from disappointing Phase II results towards a more promising drug in development.
“It is really hard to predict how investors are going to look at the overall biotech space, but my take is probably beginning in the third quarter things may start to look better for the sector.
For Angion specifically, we will be in a position to share more ANG-3070 efficacy data from animal models in pulmonary fibrosis in the middle of the year. We will also be closer to filing an IND in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis — IPF — and starting our clinical work in IPF.
The reason I’m focusing on the IPF opportunity is that our kidney study is already ongoing.
We have said we expect to finish enrolling JUNIPER, our Phase II trial in FSGS and IgAN patients, by the end of this year and should have data in the first half of next year.
When we talk to investors, they do understand how successful nintedanib has been for Boehringer Ingelheim, how significant the market opportunity is, how meaningful the unmet medical need is in IPF.
But it’s a little bit of a disconnect for some investors when we talk about our program. We have overlapping targets with OFEV, and we have what looks like, in our healthy volunteers study anyway, safety and tolerability that looks outstanding.
But then we say we’re initially studying ANG-3070 in kidney fibrosis, a condition where OFEV isn’t used and was not extensively studied. That creates a little bit of a question from investors of, “Well, if this looks a lot like it could be an improved OFEV, why are you targeting kidney fibrosis and not lung fibrosis?”
How we started down the kidney path ahead of the lung path is complicated, but we’re committed to doing both.”
Get more details from Dr. Venkatesan, CEO of Angion Biomedica (NASD: ANGN) by reading the entire 3,772 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Philippe Pouletty, Founder and Chairman, Abivax
Philippe Pouletty, M.D., is Founder and Chairman of Abivax and Co-founder and CEO of Truffle Capital. Dr. Pouletty has a strong background in Europe and the United States (including Silicon Valley) and is a pioneer in the biotechnology and medical devices sector.
As an entrepreneur, he founded/co-founded among others: Carmat, Deinove, Abivax, Pharnext, Vexim — Truffle portfolio companies.
As an inventor, Dr. Pouletty has filed 32 patents, one of which is the second-highest revenue generator in life sciences for Stanford University, earning him membership in Stanford’s prestigious Invention Hall of Fame in 2012.
Dr. Pouletty was Chairman of France Biotech from 2001 to 2009, and has held the title of Honorary Chairman since 2009. He conceived the Jeune Entreprise Innovante (JEI) program to boost the development of young and innovative companies in France.
Philippe Pouletty is a medical doctor, former resident in haematology and immunology in Parisian hospitals, and was a postdoctoral researcher (1986-1988) at Stanford University.
He was the 1999 winner of the American Liver Foundation award. Dr. Pouletty has been awarded Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.
Professor Hartmut Ehrlich, CEO, Abivax
Professor Hartmut J. Ehrlich, M.D., is Chief Executive Officer of Abivax.
Professor Ehrlich is a physician with 30 years of experience in academia and in the biopharmaceutical industry, 20 of which were in product development at Baxter and Sandoz (now Novartis).
He has lived and worked in the United States (Eli Lilly and Indiana University, Dept. of Medicine), the Netherlands (Central Laboratory of the Dutch Red Cross), Germany (Max Planck Foundation, Sandoz, Baxter), Switzerland (Sandoz), Austria (Baxter) and France (Abivax).
Over the seven years before joining Abivax, Prof. Ehrlich, as Head of Global R&D, successfully built and advanced Baxter BioScience’s R&D portfolio with over 50 programs in preclinical and clinical development.
He drove the regulatory approval of key biologics in the specialty areas of hemophilia, thrombosis, immunology, neurology, oncology, biosurgery and vaccines, thereby bringing novel therapies to patients with substantial medical needs.
Hartmut Ehrlich has authored and co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
Didier Blondel, EVP, CFO, Abivax
Didier Blondel is EVP, Chief Financial Officer and Board Secretary of Abivax. Mr. Blondel was Chief Financial Officer at Sanofi Pasteur MSD, a Lyon-based joint venture between Sanofi and Merck, and European leader in human vaccines, since 2012.
During the previous 20-year period, Mr. Blondel held a wide scope of senior finance positions at Sanofi, in Commercial Operations and then R&D, where he became Global R&D CFO. He started his career as an auditor at Price Waterhouse Coopers, after graduating from the Commercial Institute of Nancy (ICN), a leading French Business School.
He also holds a master in finance and accounting degree from University of Nancy, as well as a Professional Certificate in Finance and Accounting (DESCF).
These three top executives from Abivax SA (OTCMKTS:AAVXF) explain the tremendous upside in their company in this 2,796 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
“I think we should be clear that ABX464 carries more than 90% of the value of Abivax and is, in our view, more than a treatment for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
Based on very promising Phase IIa results in rheumatoid arthritis, ABX464 is a compound that can potentially be used for the treatment of a number of chronic inflammatory diseases.
Annual pharmaceutical revenues in this group of diseases are currently adding up to over $100 billion in the G7 countries, meaning the U.S., Japan and the five largest European countries.
Revenues for moderate to severe ulcerative colitis — biologics, JAKs and S1P — alone were around $6 billion per year in G7 countries in 2021 and are expected to grow to more than $10 billion by 2026, the year we are planning to launch our product on the market.
For Crohn’s disease, a disease similar to ulcerative colitis in many ways, the market is currently at around $13 billion in pharmaceutical sales, and expected to grow by about 15% by 2026.
Rheumatoid arthritis, another chronic inflammatory disease that we are tackling, is by itself already around $22 billion in pharmaceutical sales.
While our current priority is clearly the initiation of the pivotal Phase III program in ulcerative colitis, Abivax plans to ultimately address all three indications, with the launch of a Phase III study in ulcerative colitis, a Phase IIb in rheumatoid arthritis and a pivotal Phase IIb in Crohn’s disease.
These three diseases represent, by the time ABX464 gets to the market in 2026, a potential of roughly $50 billion per year in G7 pharmaceutical sales.”
Get the complete strategy for increasing shareholder value in Abivax (AAVXF) by reading the entire 2,796 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Bernard Gilly, Ph.D., CEO, Gensight Biologics (GSGTF)
Bernard Gilly, Ph.D., one of GenSight Biologics’ founders, has served as the Chief Executive Officer of the company since its creation.
From creation through to 2016, Dr. Gilly served as Chairman of the board of directors. From 2011 through 2014, he served as Chief Executive Officer at Pixium Vision, during which time he also served as non-executive Chairman of the board of directors.
In addition, he currently serves on the boards of Prophesee S.A. (formerly Chronocam) and TISSIUM (formerly Gecko Biomedical).
From 2005 to 2009, he founded and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fovea Pharmaceuticals S.A., or Fovea, a privately funded biotech company, which was later acquired by Sanofi.
He then became Senior Vice President of the Ophthalmology Division of Sanofi and served in that role until March 2012. Prior to Fovea, Dr. Gilly was a partner at Sofinnova Partners S.A.S. from December 2000 to November 2005.
From January 1992 to October 2000, he was Chief Executive Officer of Transgene S.A., a company listed on the Nasdaq and the Nouveau Marche of Euronext Paris, France. Dr. Gilly received an engineering degree from Ecole Nationale d’Agronomie and a Ph.D. from Universite de Rennes.
In this 2,22o word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Dr. Bernard Gilly develops the investment thesis for GenSight Biologics.
“GenSight is a gene therapy company leveraging two technology platforms.
One is a technology that, for the first time ever, allows us to target mitochondrial diseases. And the second technology is much better known. This is a technology that has been used at the bench by neurobiologists since the early 2000s.
It’s called optogenetics, and we are the first one to bring this technology to patients in an attempt to restore their vision.
The very first product that we are developing is called LUMEVOQ. At the time of the last interview, I think it was still called GS010, but now it has a commercial name.
This product addresses a mitochondrial disease of the retina called Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, LHON. Importantly, as LUMEVOQ has proven its efficacy in LHON, the underlying technology platform allows GenSight to potentially address a number of other mitochondrial diseases affecting the retina but also elsewhere in the central nervous system.
So we now have a technology that demonstrates the efficacy of LUMEVOQ and a technology that could apply to a wide range of other mitochondrial diseases.”
Dr. Bernard Gilly discusses the exciting development of European drug approval:
“We have completed three clinical trials — three pivotal trials, Phase III trials.
We have filed for approval in Europe, and we are expecting approval by the European Medicines Agency by the end of this year. We are now organizing the commercial infrastructure in Europe to launch the product very early in 2023.”
GenSight Biologics SA (GSGTF) has created hope for this devastating medical condition:
“One important thing is that with LUMEVOQ moving forward, we have launched a fairly large compassionate use program to allow patients who are affected by LHON and losing their sight to access LUMEVOQ treatment. In the U.S., we have an expanded access IND program, which is delivering really well. In December 2021, Dr. Sean Donahue presented remarkably positive results from eight patients taking part in the expanded access program at the American Academy of Ophthalmology Conference and similar results are being observed in Europe.
In France, we also have the capacity under this compassionate program to invoice the product to the hospital. And that’s an interesting benchmark for the pricing we may have after the approval. At this moment, we are pricing it at EUR700,000 per treatment, which is really important in terms of the future revenue of the company.”
Get the complete detail on all the recent drug development from GenSight Biologics SA (GSGTF) by reading the entire 2,22o word interview with Dr. Bernard Gilly, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Bernard Gilly, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO
GenSight Biologics
74, rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine
75012 Paris
France
www.gensight-biologics.com
LISA CONTE, Founder, President and CEO, Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX).
Lisa Conte is the founder, president and chief executive officer, and a member of the board of directors, of Jaguar Health, a commercial-stage pharmaceuticals company committed to discovering, developing and commercializing plant-based prescription medicines for urgent global health needs.
Mytesi, the company’s FDA-approved drug product indicated for the symptomatic relief of noninfectious diarrhea in adults with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral therapy, is a first-in-class, plant-based anti-secretory agent and the first oral drug approved under FDA Botanical Guidance.
In July 2017, two companies founded by Ms. Conte — Napo Pharmaceuticals, a human-focused pharmaceuticals company, and Jaguar Animal Health, the veterinary-focused licensor of all of Napo’s technology — merged and now comprise Jaguar Health.
In 1989, Ms. Conte also founded Shaman Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and has pioneered plant-based prescription medicine investigation and development for more than 30 years, including a recent Entheogen Therapeutics Initiative, looking at psychoactive plants for novel cures for mood disorders and CNS neurodegenerative diseases.
Ms. Conte is currently a member of the board of directors of Healing Forest Conservatory, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Life Science Leader magazine.
She holds an M.S. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA and A.B. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College.
In this extensive and wide ranging 4,170 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Lisa Conte details the prospects for Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX) and the upside for investors.
“Jaguar Health does all our drug discovery from plants used traditionally in tropical areas. So leveraging the knowledge of shamans and traditional healers to do more efficient drug discovery and development yielded a successful compound called crofelemer, which is commercialized as a product called Mytesi.
It’s a novel way of first-in-class mechanism of action for treating gastrointestinal disorders and normalizing gut function, and that is our mission, to use natural plant-based products to have new ways of treating and curing primarily gastrointestinal disorders.
And a further strategy and mission of the company is to mitigate the considerable risk associated with drug development by taking crofelemer, which is already approved by the FDA for a chronic indication, and looking at follow-on indications, follow-on patient populations, because the product is already approved, it’s already manufactured, it’s already used chronically. So it’s mitigating as much risk as possible to get it into other patient populations.”
Lisa Conte details the status of the novel drug treatmeant that Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX) is producing:
“In humans, Phase III, as you know, is the final pivotal trial. Sometimes you have to do two, sometimes you have to do one. We had a discussion with the FDA — negotiation really — for about 18 months for a single pivotal trial for cancer therapy-related diarrhea in humans. And that’s what’s going on right now.
And that’s a major transformative moment for the company in support of the potential availability of crofelemer to much larger patient populations, and of course the potential financial return that goes to shareholders associated with that.
On the animal side, the conditional approval, because it’s MUMS, which is considered an orphan indication, the product can be sold right now, only for chemotherapy-induced diarrhea in dogs.
And we need to finish within a five-year period of time the complete approval, and we have to show progress towards that every single year or, at the end of five years, they take your conditional approval away.
And so those are a pivotal trial that will be agreed to with the FDA’s Center of Veterinary Medicine, and we’re in discussions with them now.
So I reserve the Phase I, II, III terminology for the human side and particularly since this is a conditional approval on the animal side, it’s more like conditional approval, pivotal full approval trial.”
Get all the details on the development of these novel drug developments by reading the entire 4,170 word interview with Lisa Conte, CEO of Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX), exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Lisa Conte, Founder, President & CEO
email: hello@jaguar.health
Jay Roberts, President and CEO, Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT)
Jay Roberts has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of Vyant Bio, Inc. since 2018.
Mr. Roberts had previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Cancer Genetics. Prior to joining Cancer Genetics, Mr. Roberts served as the Chief Financial Officer for VirMedica, Inc., an innovative technology solutions company that provides an end-to-end platform that enables specialty-drug manufacturers and pharmacies to optimize product commercialization and management.
Before VirMedica, Mr. Roberts was the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions Inc., a global health care analytics and services organization.
Prior to that, Mr. Roberts also served as the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for InfoLogix, Inc., a publicly traded, health care-centric mobile software and solutions provider.
He has also held CFO roles at leading public medical device and health care services firms including Clarient, Inc., a publicly traded provider of diagnostic laboratory services, and Daou Systems, Inc., a publicly traded health care IT software development and services firm.
In addition, he has held key senior executive roles with MEDecision, Inc., HealthOnline, Inc., and the Center for Health Information.
Mr. Roberts earned a bachelor of science and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Maine.
He is a member of the Fellows and a former member of the board of directors and Past Chair for the Drug Information Association, a global neutral forum enabling drug developers and regulators access to education and collaboration.
Mr. Roberts also serves on the board of directors of Cohere-Med Inc., a clinical analytics company.
In this 2,291 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Jay Roberts details the recent developments and makes the investment case for Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT).
“Post merger — March 31, 2021 — throughout the remainder of 2021 and coming into 2022, we have meaningfully focused the business on neurological degenerative and developmental diseases. StemoniX had a very mature and commercially ready iPSC — or organoid screening capability — which now allows us to screen thousands of potential drug candidates to treat very specific biological targets.
This approach allows us to discover drugs that treat neurological diseases. Vyant Bio’s current focus is working on two rare diseases — CDKL5 deficiency disorder and Rett Syndrome.
CDKL5 deficiency disorder affects primarily female infants. CDKL5 is a very difficult disease to treat. It is a terrible disease which currently has large unmet medical needs. Currently, there is no approved drug for this particular disease.”
Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT) also has a drug treatment in development for Rett Syndrome:
“We are also working to treat Rett Syndrome. Rett affects young children, mostly females similar to CDKL5 including characteristics of the disease phenotype. Rett is first diagnosed in children from the approximate age of six months to about 18 months, but it is a lifelong disease. Currently there are no approved therapeutics for this disease indication.
We also have a broader view toward neurological degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, which can lead into future work for treating Alzheimer’s disease.
We are highly focused on neurological diseases, which is why it is important for us to advance our microBrain organoid technology, and combined with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data capabilities, our platform then allows us to accelerate and de-risk our decisions to identify novel and repurposed therapeutics.”
The CEO Jay Roberts believes that investors will benefit from taking a closer look at Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT):
“The upside is that we believe that we have an undervalued stock.
We believe that we have a significant amount of potential as we think about our therapeutic areas of interest.
The drugs that Vyant Bio can get into the clinic and then ultimately into patients, we believe, are greatly valued and will be a large opportunity for investors to join us in that journey.”
Get all the details for the upside in this biotech stock by reading the entire 2,291 word interview with Jay Roberts, CEO of Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT), exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Jay Roberts, President & CEO
Vyant Bio, Inc.
email: info@vyantbio.com
Pavel Molchanov, Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, Raymond James & Associates
Pavel Molchanov is Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, for Raymond James & Associates, Inc. (NYSE: RJF, Raymond James Financial)
He joined the firm in 2003 and has been part of the energy research team ever since.
He became an analyst in 2006, the year he initiated coverage on the renewable energy/clean technology sector. In this role, he covers all aspects of sustainability-themed technologies, including solar, wind, biofuels, electric vehicles, hydrogen, power storage, grid modernization, water technology, and more.
Within the energy research team, he also writes about the broader topics of geopolitical and regulatory issues, climate change, and ESG investing.
He has been recognized in the StarMine Top Analyst survey, the Forbes Blue Chip Analyst survey, and The Wall Street Journal Best on the Street survey.
He graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2003 with a bachelor of science degree in economics, with high distinction. In the broader community, he is a member of the Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Environment; a member of the Advisory Board at Cool Effect, an environmental project funding charity; and the founder of the Molchanov Sustainability Internship Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
In this 2,033 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Pavel Molchanov details his top picks including Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) and the reasoning behind his belief in their value to investors.
“Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE, Bloom Energy Corp) a play on hydrogen, is one that I like a lot.
This company faced margin pressure from higher input costs over the past year. And the stock had been very expensive at the beginning of 2021.
Bloom is the world’s largest provider of stationary fuel cells. This means fuel cells that provide distributed electric power for businesses, such as data centers, hospitals, and office buildings.
Also in 2022, Bloom will be launching an electrolyzer product.
An electrolyzer is quite literally the inverse of a fuel cell. A fuel cell generates electricity, whereas an electrolyzer uses electricity to produce hydrogen, specifically what’s called green hydrogen.
Green hydrogen is a nascent but exciting market, particularly in Europe, where the European Union has ambitious targets for scaling up green hydrogen production.”
The Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) recommendation is not without its constraints.
“The supply chain problems that reduced the profitability of many cleantech companies in the past 12 months are not going to go away overnight. It will be a gradual process, and investors should be aware of the continuation of COVID-related supply chain risk.
Secondly, we need to watch what happens with public policy. Policy as it relates to climate and sustainability varies a great deal from country to country. For example, in Washington, as 2021 comes to an end, it looks like the Build Back Better reconciliation package is unlikely to pass anytime soon.
This has relevance for cleantech from the perspective of tax credits. In the European Union, we will be watching the implementation of the European Climate Law, which in general, offers much better visibility than climate policy in Washington.”
The politics of hydrogen power are an important driver in the valuation of Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) as well as all renewable energy stocks.
“China is a crucial variable because it’s the world’s largest CO2 emitter.
Close to 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions come from China, more than the United States and European Union combined.
In July of 2021, China began its national carbon trading program, which is an important step in the direction of decarbonization. China is also the world’s largest solar market, the largest wind market, and the largest electric vehicle market. But on the other hand, the Chinese government continues to remain supportive of coal, despite its very problematic climate impact.
India is somewhat of a mixed bag in its climate policy as well.
There are two other important economies where elections need to be watched in the next 12 months.
In Australia, which is a G20 economy and a large CO2 emitter, the election will be held no later than May of 2022.
If the Labor Party comes to power, that would have a positive effect on Australian climate policy.
The other election coming up is in Brazil, also a G20 economy. The Brazilian election will be in October. If President Bolsonaro loses and is replaced by a more climate-friendly administration, that would be a positive step to making Brazil a player in climate action, especially in preventing deforestation.”
Get all of the top picks from Pavel Molchanov, award winning research analyst from Raymond James Financial, in this 2,033 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Pavel Molchanov, Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology
Raymond James & Associates, Inc.
email: pavel.molchanov@raymondjames.com
Bobby Edgerton, Co-Founder, Capital Investment Companies
Bobby Edgerton is a Co-Founder of the Capital Investment Companies and has served as an executive officer of the companies since 1984.
He is also the firm’s Chief Investment Officer and has been in the financial services industry since 1979.
After winning the North Carolina State High School Golf Championship, Mr. Edgerton accepted both a basketball and golf scholarship from Wake Forest University and graduated with a B.A. in business and finance.
After graduation, he attained a rank of First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he commanded a thousand-man training company at Fort Gordon, Georgia, during the Vietnam War. During his amateur golf career, Mr. Edgerton played in four United States Amateur Championships.
In this 2,294 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Edgerton details his current buy list.
“…In my 20s, I became interested in the stock market. I wanted to be self-sufficient and financially independent. And I figured if you could master the stock market, per se, and you could make enough money and become wealthy before your time.
So you didn’t have to be dependent on anyone, and you didn’t have to work if you didn’t want to.
So I started following the stock market and saw how many mistakes the big institutions would make consistently, and how stocks had these wild fluctuations up and down. And if you just buy when they’re down, buy when everybody else is selling, that would be a key to doing well…
It’s about time interest rates started tracing back up to some normal level. I think low interest rates really benefit the rich, because they can borrow money cheap and go public cheap, but it doesn’t really help the lower half of the population where most are not so much into the stock market as maybe others, and over time are putting their money into CDs in the bank and getting a decent yield.
But they’re getting virtually nothing now for the last four or five years, which is kind of sad.”
The long term vision of Bobby Edgerton has reward his investors:
“I bought Apple in 1995 when Jobs was released — that is, fired — from Apple and John Sculley had come in. So Jobs was fired, and the stock went way down, and everybody was talking about Apple going broke.
Yet back in 1995, they had $1.3 billion in cash and the debt was only $300 million, and everybody loved the Mac and hated IBM (NYSE:IBM).
IBM had lost money for four years in a row. So my instincts told me that if you bought Apple when everybody else was selling it, you probably had a good chance at making money.
And following my instincts we actually bought 500 shares and the stock split two for one.
So I had 1,000. Then, two for one again, I had 2,000. And seven for one, 14,000. And four for one and had 56,000 shares, and I only started out at 500.
So, you know, I got lucky. Jobs came back and the rest is history.”
Bobby Edgerton’s current picks include a defense contractor and a newspaper publisher:
“My number-one stock is a company called Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE:AJRD).
Aerojet Rocketdyne was formed back in the 1940s. Their CEO back then owned General Tire Company (OTCMKTS:CTTAY), which had a lot to do with helping us in World War II.
But he saw how important rocketry and rocket technology in space was going to be.
So he sold the tire business and started Aerojet Rocketdyne. And back in the early 1950s, he bought about 12,000 acres of land, 15 miles from downtown Sacramento. And they still own it.
And right now it’s an insanely cheap stock. Here’s a company that has $620 million in cash and debt is $500 million, so more cash than debt. And there’s no telling what that real estate is worth.
And it was Aerojet that really essentially put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and Michael Thompson on the moon.
Michael Thompson was the pilot of the ship, but he didn’t get to fly to the moon.
Currently, Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) has made a $56 a share offer as we speak this morning, but they have officially terminated that offer, due to the FTC assuming it would harm rival defense contractors and further consolidate multiple markets critical to national security and defense.
This is the agency’s first litigated defense merger challenge in decades. So you can buy the stock at $37 and can figure Lockheed Martin has done a lot of the homework for you. They’re a very smart company. And that’s what I’m going to buy some more of this morning. It’s my number-one buy.
And maybe my number-two buy is The New York Times (NYSE:NYT).
The New York Times fell on kind of hard times back in 2012. They had a CEO who borrowed a lot of money, bought The Boston Globe, and bought part of the Boston Red Sox.
They also sold part of The New York Times building.
Then they hired Mark Thompson. He had never run a company before, he was the head of the BBC. He solidified the company, paid off every penny of debt, got the cash up, and no debt. Once he got the job done, he then retired.
And in walks Meredith Kopit Levien who began reading The New York Times when she was in high school in Richmond.
She went to UVA and became a star at The Cavalier Daily. She also shined at a famous consultancy run by David Bradley up in D.C. And she was also a star at Forbes, getting Forbes out of so much print and into more online digital subscriptions.
So The New York Times brought her in. And now she’s the CEO there. And personally, I would vote for her for president if she could run.
So The New York Times is now valued at about $7 billion but it’s worth a lot more than that. They still own 53% of The New York Times building.
And the stock is just numerically down. They now have 10 million subscribers, the majority of which are digital. And she’s doing a lot of interesting things — specialty apps on the web, like cooking and sports, and more.
And so, both of those stocks have been trading at around $40. Today, The Times is about $42 and Aerojet Rocketdyne is $37 and change. So you get all that real estate outside Sacramento, they have 12,000 acres. So they have about 8% of the land that Raleigh has in the whole city.”
Get the full 2,294 word interview with Bobby Edgerton, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, including all his current stock picks and more, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Scott Slater, President and CEO, Cadiz (CDZI)
Scott Slater is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Cadiz Inc., appointed to the role of President in April 2011 and Chief Executive Officer effective February 1, 2013 with the purposed of fulfilling the company’s California water supply project plans.
Mr. Slater has been a member of the company’s board of directors since February 2012. Mr. Slater is an accomplished water rights transactional attorney and litigator and, in addition to his role at the company, is a shareholder in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, the nation’s leading water law firm.
For nearly 40 years, Mr. Slater has focused on negotiation of agreements and enacting policy related to the acquisition, distribution, and treatment of water.
He has served as lead negotiator on a number of important water transactions, including the negotiation of the largest conservation-based water transfer in U.S. history on behalf of the San Diego County Water Authority and is recognized as one of the leading water law and policy lawyers in the United States.
Mr. Slater serves on the Limoneira Company board of directors (NASDAQ:LMNR) and sits on its Executive and Risk Committees.
Mr. Slater also has an extensive background in state, federal and international water policy and is the author of California Water Law and Policy, the state’s leading treatise on the subject.
He has taught water law and policy courses at University of California, Santa Barbara, Pepperdine University, and the University of Western Australia, (China) among others. He is presently advising the nation of Tunisia on water policy.
In this exclusive 5,399 word interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Scott Slater details his company’s quest to develop a water supply project in California.
“…The entirety of my professional life has been in the water space.
I am a practicing lawyer. I’ve got 37 years now — it’s hard for me to believe, but 37 years in the water space.
And in addition to practicing law and negotiating and litigating some of the most high-profile and sticky issues in California, I also wrote a book called California Water Law and Policy, which is a well-known treatise, and taught water law in law schools and graduate schools in the U.S. and internationally.
I’ve worked around the globe in the water area, in Australia, Tunisia, China, and I became aware of Cadiz in my early days of working on the Colorado River in the late 1990s.”
Scott Slater has a wealth of knowledge on the water supply issues and concerns for Los Angeles.
“The project was approved by California in California. So the history of the project was that a former, more impactful form of the project, involving a federal right-of-way permit, was approved by the federal government in 2002.
That project did not get to go ahead in California because the project partner did not want to go forward in 2002, and that was the Metropolitan Water District.
The principal reason that was identified for not going forward was the absence of answers to questions about the ability of the project to operate without causing harm to the environment.
When I came on in 2009, we decided to do something that they hadn’t done in 2002, which was to go to the host county, San Bernardino County, where the water was going to be taken and go through their permitting process.
We re-routed our proposed pipeline and consequently there was no federal involvement; no federal land, no federal issue of any kind involved in 2009 when we started. The County of San Bernardino, in 2012, fully permitted the groundwater use, and at the local level, they permitted the land-use plan, the transportation plan, all of that.
It also went through an environmental review process that was hosted by the principal entity that received the water, Santa Margarita Water District, also in 2012.
So what happened was, the environmental review concluded that, as I said, there were no, not a single adverse environmental impact that was associated with the project — none, not one.
Then, the County of San Bernardino, even with all due respect to what the Santa Margarita Water District did on the environmental review, it then also conditioned the project.
Now both of those entities were sued. They were sued nine times. Six went to trial, and all six in California were validated at trial.
All of the arguments that project owners had were rejected. And then it went to the Court of Appeal. And once again, the Court of Appeal ruled six separate times that all of the approvals issued to the project in California by California entities were proper.
So the Trump administration never gave — there wasn’t even a glimmer of thought in 2012 when it was originally approved in California, and there was no element involving the federal government at that time.
So how does the federal government get involved? We wanted to begin converting a natural gas pipeline to convey water. So in 2011, while President Obama was still serving — in fact, in his first term — we executed an agreement with El Paso Natural Gas to acquire a portion of their 220-mile pipeline and that acquisition was conditioned at closing on the federal government approving the assignment of that pipeline to us.
And the way the bureaucratic world works, that process continued through the end of the Obama administration, and occupied most of the Trump administration, while they were renewing a 1,300-mile pipeline of which we were going to buy a 220-mile segment.
In short, it was processed and the federal government’s approval was for a segment of that 1,300-mile pipeline, a 57-mile stretch over federal land.
We sought the federal approval of a right of way for us to substitute water for natural gas without any surface disturbance and enter the conveyance business.
The federal government approved a right of way for that stretch — not the whole 220, but for that stretch. And that happened under a process which basically took many years to complete — the environmental review of the whole 1,300-mile pipeline — but we had to have the whole review before we could do our segment. And that’s what the Trump Administration approved; it did not approve the use of any water sources of any kind.
When we say administration, that was the sitting president, but it was the BLM office in Needles, California, who approved it. And that’s what happened.
So we don’t view that as the Trump administration had anything to do with the project. It’s pretty much bedrock BLM policy that if there’s no surface disturbance, there are no environmental impacts to study for something that’s happening and many miles away and not in the federal right of way.”
The contrary opinion is espoused by Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Chuck Phillips in 1999:
“As proposed by Cadiz Inc., the idea was to store surplus Colorado River water under a desert tract owned by the company, pump it out during dry spells and transport it by pipeline or canal to Southern California urban users.
Among the problems is that there isn’t any surplus water in the Colorado. The basin is in a long-term drought, and for the foreseeable future California will be lucky to get its full statutory apportionment of river water. A single extra drop? Forget it.
Furthermore, there’s considerable disagreement over how much groundwater really underlies the Cadiz land, not to mention how much the company is legally permitted to pump out and how much could be pumped before neighboring aquifers become contaminated with carcinogenic minerals.”
Get both sides to this complex topic by reading the complete interview with Scott Slater in his exclusive 5,399 word interview with the Wall Street Transcript.
Scott Slater, President & CEO
Cadiz Inc.
www.cadizinc.com
email: waterinfo@cadizinc.com
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-biden-moved-finally-kill-205936343.html
https://www.twst.com/interview/interview-with-the-president-and-ceo-cadiz-inc-nasdaqcdzi
Amanda Brock, CEO & President, Aris Water Solutions (ARIS)
Amanda Brock is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Aris Water Solutions (ARIS), a leading produced water infrastructure and recycling company primarily focused on the Permian Basin which went public in October 2021.
Ms. Brock has been with Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) and its predecessor Solaris Water Midstream since 2017.
She has spent her career focused on the global oil and gas, power, and water sectors. Prior to joining Solaris, Ms. Brock was CEO of Water Standard, a water treatment company focused on desalination, produced water treatment and recycling for both the upstream and downstream energy sectors.
Previously, Ms. Brock was President of the Americas for Azurix, responsible for developing water infrastructure and related services, and prior to that was President of Enron Joint Venture Management, managing Enron’s global power assets and partnerships.
Ms. Brock serves on the public boards of Coterra Energy, Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation, and is the current Chair of the Texas Business Hall of Fame.
She previously served on the Board of Trustees of LSU Law School and Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico.
She was named one of the Top 10 Women in Energy by the Houston Chronicle and in 2016 was recognized both as one of the Top 25 Leaders in Water globally and as a Texas Honoree for Women in Energy. She also facilitated a White House delegation to Abu Dhabi as part of the Obama Administration’s Moonshot for Water Initiative.
In 2017, Ms. Brock was inducted into the Houston Women’s Business Hall of Fame and in 2020 was named one of the 25 Influential Women in Energy by Hart Energy Oil and Gas Investor magazine.
Ms. Brock is originally from Mbabane, Swaziland, and grew up in Zimbabwe. She completed her bachelor’s undergraduate degree at the University of Natal in South Africa and earned her Juris Doctor from Louisiana State University, where she was a member of the Law Review.
She is dedicated to responsible conservation and passionate about elephants, water and energy security.
In her 1,776 word interview, exlusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Ms. Brock details her strategy for maximizing returns for her shareholders in Aris Water Solutions (ARIS):
“Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) was founded in late 2016 and was originally backed by two private equity groups.
We are a growth-oriented environmental infrastructure company with a demonstrated ESG record that delivers full-cycle water handling and recycling solutions to our customers.
Our asset footprint is primarily located in the Northern Delaware Basin in southern New Mexico, with additional assets in the Midland Basin in Texas. Our infrastructure and service offerings help our customers mitigate their environmental impact and water footprints by maximizing the recycling of produced water and minimizing the use of fresh and groundwater.
We are a leader in recycling operations in the Permian Basin.
While we have a diversified customer base, ConocoPhillips is our largest shareholder.
We had a prior relationship and long-term, large acreage dedication with Concho Resources who was purchased by ConocoPhillips in 2021. Since ConocoPhillips inherited this position, we’ve been able to expand our relationship with additional contracts and recycling services.”
Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) provides a vital service to the oil and gas producers in the Permian:
“The Permian Basin is an arid area and every barrel of water we recycle is a barrel of groundwater or fresh water that is not extracted from local water resources.
Our recycling activity has an immediate and long-term benefit for our customers, the communities in which we operate, the environment, and our investors and stakeholders.
In addition, we are very active working with universities, the DOE, private technology companies, our customers, and others focused on identifying and adapting technologies for beneficial reuse of treated produced water outside of the oil and gas industry.
Regulators in both Texas and New Mexico are looking at promulgating regulations governing the treatment and use of this water oiutside of the oil and gas industry, and anticipating these regulations, we’re engaged in several pilot projects.
For example, we are working with Texas A&M University evaluating the use of treated produced water for irrigation of cotton — a non-consumptive crop — which looks promising.
We are also looking at other alternatives which include irrigation of rangeland grass for carbon sequestration. These are all extremely important initiatives, and you will see us continuing to proactively look for other uses for this water.”
Get the complete interview with Amanda Brock of Aris Water Solutions by reading the entire 1,776 word interview, exlusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Amanda Brock, President & CEO
Aris Water Solutions, Inc.
www.ariswater.com
email: contact@ariswater.com
