Assay Results Highlight Extended Mineralisation at Cassini Resources’ Yarawindah Project

Summary

• World continues to track economic and epidemiological developments around COVID-19, and as lockdowns lift, businesses are pondering over their next moves.
• Current times offer leaders the unique opportunity to structure, strengthen and leverage their company cultures to establish great, memorable impact for their organisations.
• A double-edged weapon, while novel coronavirus wreaked havoc on businesses and marks a period wherein most companies are struggling financially, there have been market winning and prospering players across the world.
• Ironically, a major chunk of strong companies amid the pandemic hail from the world’s top two economies- the US and China, which are and were one of the biggest sufferers of the virus, respectively.

It is bad news that an invisible enemy continues to expose many organisations to a variety of risks, impacting business and investor community across the world. It is worse that modern-day globally interconnected businesses face serious risk of disruption of global supply chains that may cause significant loss of revenue and adversely impact global economies.

But what is worst is the hard fact that traditional resilience planning might not suffice for businesses to tackle the novel coronavirus, which as on 10 July 2020, accounts for 12.1 million confirmed cases and 551k deaths in 216 countries (as per WHO).

However, not all has been grim, as there are two sides to the same coin!

Just like there have been nations that fought the virus with resilience to an extent of deeming themselves COVID-19 free (New Zealand, for instance, stole the show in this regard, owing to the much accoladed leadership of PM Jacinda Ardern), there have been companies that have emerged as clear winners in the ongoing market uncertainty. Backed by lucrative product and service offerings, robust management, timely and resilient plans, strong fundamentals, to name a few factors- a handful companies have shone in the dismal year for business.

World powers- the US and China, which are currently ranked at Number 1 and 23, respectively, on the COVID-19 confirmed cases dashboard of John Hopkins, dominate the space of prospering companies amid novel coronavirus. Interestingly, not long ago, these nations were the top victims of the virus. While the US still has more than 3.1 million cases, Chinese cases have shunned down to 84.9k (on 11 July 2020, as per John Hopkins).

Let us look at four companies that have been garnering market and investor attention, owing to their resilient performances while being equally exposed to the virus.

Amazon.com, Inc.

Jeff Bezos’ net worth smashed headlines yet again a few days back, as the billionaire founder of one of the world’s leading e-commerce portals touched a fortune of over USD 171 billion. Quite naturally, Amazon has truly benefited with the pandemic accelerating consumer shift to e-commerce. A one-stop-shop for all consumer’s needs, the Company has evolved to become the emergency portal for all who need vital goods in lockdowns.

Reportedly, demonstrating its strong capabilities even amid market turmoil, Amazon believes that it could spend more than USD 4 billion to keep logistics up and running. Moreover, the Company is offering a special one-time Thank You bonus worth over USD 500 million to its employees and has established a USD 25 million relief fund for partners, with donations and philanthropy flowing towards the crisis- for instance, USD 20 million AWS Diagnostic Initiative to accelerate the COVID-19 research.

In Q2, Bezos expects the Company to make USD 4 billion or more in operating profit. Operating cash flow rose 16% to USD 39.7 billion for the trailing twelve months, relative to USD 34.4 billion for the trailing twelve months ended 31 March 2019.

NASDAQ:AMZN was up 0.55% and quoted USD 3.2k on 10 July 2020.

Tesla, Inc.

Reportedly, Elon Musk's wealth may have officially surpassed that of Warren Buffett, driven by the Company’s skyrocketing stock price and a hefty donation by Mr Buffett. NASDAQ:TSLA was up 10.78% and quoted USD 1.54k on 10 July 2020, very close to its 52 weeks high. With a whopping USD 286.33 billion market capitalisation, there is market anticipation that Tesla shares might soon find a spot in the S&P 500 market index.

After a bold getting back to work restart plan in May, the electric vehicle manufacturer has continued to make progress, for instance, it recently launched the lowest-ever cost to go solar in the US. Moreover, the Company is reportedly building a factory in Berlin to manufacture both its Model 3 and Model Y.

Alibaba Group

E-commerce, retail, internet and technology specialist, Chinese multinational tech Alibaba is the country’s largest technology company. While the world tackled novel coronavirus, Alibaba has reportedly been doubling down on its cloud strategy with an estimated USD 28 billion increase in spending over the next three years.

The Company has well evolved to become one of China’s biggest corporate winners amid the crisis- gaining the prospect of business expansion and solidifying its status as an integral part of China’s socio-economic engine. Traffic in its online marketplaces has been skyrocketing while demand for services like food delivery has been on the rise.

In May, Alibaba reported increases of 21% in quarterly revenue and 19% in core commerce sales, well beyond expectations. It has launched a new initiative to scale up global recruitment and training efforts for businesses. The recent 6.18 Mid-Year Shopping Festival was also a lucrative opportunity to fuel economic recovery – domestically, for foreign trade partners as well as brands, globally.

Mindray

Working towards the mission to advance medical technologies and making healthcare more accessible, Shenzhen (China)- based medical equipment company Mindray has evolved to be a saviour of many amid the coronavirus crisis. The Company, which has reportedly exported ~ 100k medical devices including ventilators, has been ramping up manufacturing capacity.

According to Chairman Li Xiting, Mindray’s easy-to-use and multi-functional products from PMLS, IVD and MIS units reportedly have been equipped to certify precision medical care for a large number of patients in limited hospital spaces. Its new portable ultrasound systems, ME series, available in select countries, are designed to enhance clinical confidence during critical and emergency COVID-19 cases. By April itself, the Company had donated USD 4.6 million worth of devices to hospitals all over the world.

More recently, the Company launched the construction of Mindray Wuhan Center, with a total investment of RMB 4.5 billion.

Despite accelerating spread of the deadly virus, businesses are dealing with their urgent requirements while looking ahead to the time when their complete workforce can safely return to work. With new developments across the medical world making headlines by the day and easing restrictions by several governments worldwide, that moment seems to come closer. Moreover, with quite a few businesses leveraging from opportunities arising from the crisis, humongous action and reform is likely in the remainder of 2020 in the contemporary business world.

(Note: Please read currency as denoted)