Having lived in France for many years while dependent on power generated in its nuclear plants along the River Loire, I am an authorized atom supporter. France has to spend money to upgrade these venerable plants, but there now seems to be a push to do so even if it means building an atom power plant in western England which will probably have left the European Union before it comes on stream.

The era of no-atom power has come to an end also in the only country run by a physicist, Germany. Its supreme court has ruled that its ban on electricity companies using nuclear energy is unconstitutional and has forced the tax authorities to reimburse fines imposed on the power generating sector. Since Germany has a huge budget surplus this will not hurt its accounts—but it just may help the world become more green. While many people are terrified of atom power given the Chernobyl disaster, in fact far more people die annually because of filthy air from coal-burning plants than have ever died because of atom disasters, not just in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, but also at Three Mile Island in the US, and in Japan'sTepco meltdown.

PM Merkel in 2011 (despite knowing better) backed a law requiring that operators of nuclear plants pay for shutting them down and dealing with nuclear waste.

This will have important consequences on our portfolio. And on a new addition to it today. We have news from Canada, Colombia, Germany, Israel, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, India, and Britain.

Healthcare

*A huge earnings surprise came from Danish Novo Nordisk.

It beat handily with H1 profits and issued a rosy outlook for the full year after operating profits rose 8% year on year to DKK 26.9 bn ($4.25 bn). This despite an expected US slowdown because of lower rebates for insulin.

Its sales rose 4% to DKK 57 bn, also beating consensus. For H2 it now expects a 1-3% rise in sales in constant currencies, up from earlier 0-2%.

“We are well on track to deliver on our targets for 2017 based on sales growth driven by our new, innovative products within diabetes and obesity care and a continued focus on cost control," said CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen. "Although the formulary negotiations in the USA reflect the tough competitive environment, we remain confident that our long-term financial growth targets are achievable." NVO rose 5.3% in European trading and is up 8.7% so far on Wall St.

“It’s important to not only focus on price,” Jorgensen said in an interview with FiercePharma, a blog.

Novo sales grew 7% in the first half of the year, despite price declines. “If you have a strong portfolio of products you can still go out and drive volume,” he added. “You can prioritize products with a slightly higher clinical profile,” such as NOV’s newer basal insulin Tresiba.

Tresiba now commands 8.5% of the new insulin market, up from 5% at the beginning of 2017, according to the conference call. Moreover, execs expect to hit 10% of the market this year. This, moreover, despite an FDA delay on updating its label with new cardiovascular safety information.

*Today news that Mylan will delay its generic Copaxone for the rest of this year took up its maker, Teva, which again worked upward by over 2% before falling back into its funk as the market realized that generics overall are in trouble.

But it looks like GlaxoSmithKline got a real boost because Mylan also will not be doing a generic of the UK major's Advair. GSK.

Teva also indicated that it will sell its contractor generics production arm in Iceland, Medis, which it acquired with Activis generics a year ago. The buyer is allegedly Finnish. This is not the only spin-off planned by the Israeli firm. It will also flog off its women's health arm.

At risk of being called a heretic, I wonder if interim CEO Yitzchak Peterburg wouldn't be wise to call upon Dr. Jeremy Levin to fill the gap created by the ineptitude of his successor as CEO of Teva. He meets the standard Peterburg quoted, being an experience senior drug exec, as well as being a Jew and a Zionist, and having been fired for skepticism about the future edge for a generics maker—now proven right—and the need to develop drugs in house like a major—now also proven right. His sacking was over reduction in Israeli manning levels, which back then was considered politically incorrect, but which now is clearly the only way TEVA can survive.

*Bavarian Nordic announced the subscription price and the number of new shares to be issued to Johnson & Johnson Innovation for the license signed July 27 with JNJ sub Janssen Pharma based on the weighted volume average price of BVNRY in on the Copenhagen Nasdaq which ended today. The subscription price is DKK 405.1578/ash and the total to be paid is $33 mn or DKK 207,482,135. Bavarian Nordic will issue 512,102 new shares or 1.63% of existing capital at DKK 405.1578/sh when the transaction is cleared under the US Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act. It is our other Danish drug play.

*From Finland, we have Nokia which is also in healthcare with its Withings brand of devices. They will now be available at NOK stores and others carrying its line of trackers, scales, linked health devices for phones, and other products. NOK is not the likely buyer of Medis.

Energy Trades

*The nuclear winner from Germany's refund will be Cameco, CCJ, of Canada, a leading uranium miner. Morningstar rates it a buy with a C$22 target price plus a 3.13% yield. We own CCJ in the US but it is Canadian by origin, reporting in US$s.

*Another winner will be German utes who will collect huge refunds from the end of what German headlines call “die Atomban”. My choice for the win is E.On SE, a German ute, (EONGY) which reported good results from a possible turnaround in its operations today. Its CFO Marc Spieker said “we played a strong catch-up gain to maker up for the slow start” this year. Its net came in for Q2 at euros 356 mn ($420 mn) vs a euros 54 mn net profit in Q1 or euros 2.76/sh, which was below analyst forecasts. Q2 rocketed through them

EONGY lost euros 16 bn in Q2 last year. Losses for 2016 totaled euros 8 bn mostly from write-downs and the separation of renewables from fossil power, now held via a wholly owned sub called Uniper. It kept the renewables. Fortum of Finland is rumored to be a possible buyer of Uniper. A Finn with deep pockets is often spotted today.

Spieker also forecast that it would achieve adjusted operating profit of euros 2.8-3.1 bn and adjusted net of euros 1.2-1.45 mn. Earnings per share will rise b 50% to the end of next year. It is already halfway there with H1 adjusted net at euros 881 mn boosted by strong energy grid performance in Germany and neighboring countries. It also cut its debt to euros 21.5 bn from close-2016 level of euros 26.3 bn.

Not everything was rosy. It failed to sell as many renewable contracts notably in wind power. It will collect some euro s 3 bn in refunds for the anti-nuclear tax according to CEO Johannes Teyss, and the money can be used for acquisitions.

E.On has some fun businesses, apart from a network that covers not just Germany but also links to Sweden, eastern Europe as far east as Turkey, and a program to convert Germans to rooftop solar power. In southwest Germany it set up a heat and power co-generation system for a food-maker called DSM Nutritional, which is a recent offshoot of what used to be a coal-miner called Dutch State Mines. It also has a pilot project in Ireland to generate electricity with flying drones in place of land or water based wind turbines, a jv with Ampyx Power.

The clincher is that both the management and the supervisory board resolved to increase the dividend payout to at least 65% of adjusted net income by 2018. The negative is that it is at a 12-mo high. BUY EONGY at under $11/sh which amounts to a backward p/e ratio of 3x earnings.

*Ecopetrol was slashed to hold from buy by one of my favorite indie stock analysis groups, ValuEngine. Its shares have risen because of shortfalls in heavy crude supplies to mostly US refiners, as a result of sanctions against its neighbor, Venezuela. My taste for EC was ultimately not about the cost of crude—which has failed to pay off as much as expected in EC accounts, mainly because it has had to match lower Opec prices of late—but because of politics. I wanted to gain from the end of the half century of civil war in Colombia. 

Time to exit. Its report today showed hefty volume increases in its oil output—but not in sales because of what it calls its “Commercial strategy” which led it to sell crude oil at $6.61 below the Brent price per barrel. Despite this its net income in Colombian pesos rose by nearly 100% to COP 2.2 trillion y/y and it cut its net debt by 13%. The good news is a singular success in its exploration program in both Colombia and Mexico. But if it underprices its output we will be involved in Latin American politics rather than the oil industry. SELL EC.

Non-Health Tech

 *Canada's CAE which develops pilot and medical simulators, signed contracts for C$175 mn in the 1st quarter on which it reports Thursday, Q1 2017-8. They include Lockheed Martin to support development of five C-130J fuselage trainers for the US Marine Corps and US Air Force Special Operations Command; L-3 MAS to continue providing CF-18 in-service support services for the Royal Canadian Air Force's CF-18 fleet; and Airbus Defense and Space and the RAF to provide in-service support for the C295W Fixed-Wing Search and Rescue training program.

*India Insider buying led BoA-Merrill to raise its rating of Vodafone just as I did yesterday. The brokerage raised VOD from neutral to buy with a target price of $32.56 price target on the stock, up 10%.

*Our Tencent will be one of the investors in a new “Essential” phone encased in titanium and costing $699, being developed by Android inventor Andy Rubin, according to the Wall St Journal. The cash round is raising $300 mn and is also be funded by Amazon.

Finance

*”Standard Life managed a positive surprise in emerging markets ahead of its merger with emerging market (EM) specialist Aberdeen Asset Management.

The life assurer-cum-asset manager’s India and China joint ventures helped deliver £33mn, some £11m n ahead of expectations, and helped operating profit rise to £362m n . Net inflows for these operations were up two-thirds to £274m. But in the major operations, performance was lacklustre” wrote Emma Powell in Investors Chronicle online today.

Her colleague Ian Smith is more upbeat, writing:

“Any company results season is an opportunity to take a snapshot of a business at a particular point in its life cycle which has been on a long journey from life assurer to asset manager " , he wrote about SLFPY “Perhaps scale-at-all-costs is the only answer that investment management companies can provide to the frightening growth of low-cost, passively invested strategies. But further outflows from Standard Life Investment's flagship multi-asset strategy, GARS [its leading fund s under management, Global Absolute Return Strategy], suggest the creature that will emerge from the chrysalis will be a big fund manager with lots of costs and an inflows problem. At least Standard Life has other tricks to bring to the party, as it continues to grow well in workplace and adviser-distributed savings.”

For a third view I went to “Lex” in the Financial Times who called the “slim premium” merger a “defensive” play on Asia and cited its “over-reliance on the bond-heavy GARS range”. He or she then said: “Greater scale should alleviate both bills. Outflows from GARs meant investors pulled some £3.7 bn, about 1% of client assets" which was blamed on a poor performance in 2016. “It is rare for a mega-fund that has faltered once to fully regain its mojo”. But Lex then decides:

“GARS will represent just 7% of post-merger assets compared with 12% before. A combined asset pool of about £650 bn should help 'Staberdeen' cut costs too, cushioning the dividend from fee declines. Projected savings of £200 mn worth roughly £1. bn taxed and capitalised, are why shareholders backed the takeover.”

And as I reported SLFPY did lift operating profits despite the GARS outflow and upped its dividend. Lex then decides having a single CEO rather than sharing the job between Keith Skeoch and Martin Gilbert would be better. Your editor knows Gilbert from his visits here to push closed-end funds from what used to be Aberdeen. I think the pair are grown-ups and unlike to get into sibling rivalry. And Asia is Aberdeen's CEF stomping ground as it was founded for Pacific Rim yields by a bunch of Australians, not a pair of Scots.

Funds

*EQT Infrastructure Fund III signed a definitive agreement to buy a majority stake in Spirit Communications, a leading pure-play fiber based data and broadband service provider in the Carolinas and Georgia but its current owners will keep a minority stake. Amount was not given. Spirit operates in the attractive fiber infrastructure sector, a core market for EQT which is a subsidiary of our Investor A/Bof Sweden, IVSBF.

*In the last quarter according to a report to the SEC by founder Tracy Martland IV, our Advent Claymore Global Convertible Equity Fund, AGC, a closed end fund, voted only in favor of management proposals, and not in favor of shareholder ones even over what look like pay fiddles for the brass. Either it is more establishmentarian than Macquarie First Trust Global Infrastructure and Utilities (MFD) or the shareholders in holdings of AGC are pushing wild notions of corporate governance. Mr Martland is one of the rare African-Americans heading a closed-end fund group