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VIDEO – Peak Fintech (PKK : CSE) Expects $104M in Revenue and $5.6M in Earnings for 2021, Find Out Why

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 4:07 PM on Thursday, July 29th, 2021
Peak Fintech Group (@PEAK_Fintech) | Twitter

How do you connect over 100M small businesses in China who need access to different kinds of credit …. with 1000’s of banks and lending institutions that have different lending criteria?

Well, if you try to do it the old fashioned way, you just can’t.  This forces SMB’s (small and medium businesses) and lenders to deal within local markets, which drastically reduces alternatives, competition and ultimately business …. while leaving both sides with a daunting, slow and inefficient manual workload. 

ENTERS PEAK FINTECH

The Peak Fintech Lending Hub uses Artificial Intelligence and analytics to fully automate the process by which lenders and borrowers connect quickly and match perfectly across several market verticals.

The Lending Hub ecosystem helped facilitate approximately CAD$2.24B worth of transactions since 2018, with approximately 31 000 SMEs in the ecosystem

When CEO Johnson Joseph says this AI-Powered platform is revolutionizing the Chinese SMB commercial lending ecosystem, it isn’t just lip service … Peak Fintech is delivering results:

Q1 Financial Highlights:

  • Total revenue of $14,239,776
  • Adjusted EBITDA* of $121,737

Revenue Projections:

  • $105 MILLION Revenue Projected This Year
  • $305M 2022
  • $625M 2023 

      + 

  • NASDAQ within 3 weeks
  • M&A + ⏫ $$ Revisions

Watch this powerful interview with Peak Fintech CEO Johnson Joseph.

Good Life Networks $GOOD.ca – The Trade Desk $TTD A Fast-Growing #AdTech Company, Opens For Business In China $RUBI $AT.ca $TRMR $FUEL

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 11:32 AM on Friday, March 29th, 2019
SPONSOR: Good Life Networks (GOOD:TSX-V) Video advertising is the future! Company’s A.I. makes 80,000 calculations / second, targeting 750 million users to deliver higher prices and volume. Company announced combined trailing 12 month revenue at just over $40 Million, $7.9M EBITDA, $3 Million net income. Click here for more information.
GOOD: TSX-V

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The Trade Desk, A Fast-Growing Ad-Tech Company, Opens For Business In China

Search engine Baidu partners with the Trade Desk in China. 

  • The Trade Desk, the fast-growing programmatic advertising platform, flung open its doors in China on Tuesday
  • Several months after announcing partnerships with key Chinese Internet players, officially offer global brands a shot at the country’s 800 million Internet users.
  • (That’s 20% of all internet users in the word.) And, 788 million of them are mobile.

Jill Goldsmith Contributor

The Trade Desk, the fast-growing programmatic advertising platform, flung open its doors in China on Tuesday. Several months after announcing partnerships with key Chinese Internet players, it can officially offer global brands a shot at the country’s 800 million Internet users. (That’s 20% of all internet users in the word.) And, 788 million of them are mobile.

Marketers are eager to tap the massive opportunity of China’s 1.4 billion population and expanding middle class. In an announcement, the Trade Desk described an active period of beta testing that delivered multi-channel campaigns to Chinese audiences in sectors ranging from hospitality, luxury retail and education to food, beverage and biotech.

Trade Desk clients can tap into China on the same proprietary Trade Desk platform they use for the rest of the world.

Programmatic advertising automates buying and selling. The Trade Desk’s platform helps marketers analyze, locate and target audiences and optimize pricing across markets and devices. The platform’s capabilities, user interface and planning tools were updated last summer in an AI-driven package called the Next Wave that’s had quick uptake by clients and helped drive robust financials in 2018.

The ad-tech company reported full-year revenue of $477 million, up 55% year-on-year. Net income jumped to $88 million from $50 million. It expects revenue to continue rising this year to $637 million. The Trade Desk was founded in 2009 in Ventura, California. It went public in 2016.

International accounted for 15% of total sales. That’s a big jump from three years ago, CEO and founder Jeff Green told investors this month, but it’s well short of where the company wants to be. China’s a major step in that expansion. “We have made a significant investment in the country over the past few years,” Green said in the statement, “and are confident in our ability to be the trusted programmatic partner to help multinational brands grow in China.”

At the Mach 6 investor event, Green described an even bigger mandate he sees. “We are not just there to ride the wave [of a rising middle class], but to empower it. Helping people decide for the first time what kind of laundry detergent to washing machine to buy.”

The Trade Desk now has some 50 employees in offices in mainland China and Hong Kong and is looking to hire about 20 more. According to its latest 10k, it has 724 clients around the world, mostly advertising agencies or divisions within them.

In an interview, Tim Sims, SVP of inventory partnerships, shrugged off Wall Street jitters over China’s slower growth because the market is just so big and the number of connected consumers growing so fast. “What’s so incredible to me is that, in a relatively short period of time, in less than a generation, [the population equivalent of] two United States are getting access to the internet.”

Sims said myriad deals beyond those with the big four partners the company announced had to be set up over the course of a challenging several years. In the US and Europe, he noted, media, tech and data companies often serve multiple markets. “In China, every single partner is new to us,” he said.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgoldsmith/2019/03/26/the-trade-desk-opens-for-business-in-china-with-alibaba-baidu-tencent/#62139ad23601

INDUSTRY BULLETIN: CBS ’60 Minutes’ airs segment on rare earths security of supply

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 4:51 PM on Friday, March 27th, 2015

In our ongoing efforts to provide you with broader communications and industry information, this Bulletin brings to your attention a twenty-minute program segment on CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast on March 22, 2015 entitled “Modern life’s devices under China’s grip?” The video and transcript can be found at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rare-earth-elements-china-monopoly-60-minutes-lesley-stahl/

The program focuses on the security of supply issue created by China’s virtual monopoly on rare earths production. One of the key points raised is that the US defense technologies increasingly rely on rare earths, putting US national security at risk to supply shortages. The segment closed with a comment on the current financial challenges facing the only current US producer, Molycorp.

However, the program did not make the distinction between the light and heavy rare earth elements and the fact that the heavy rare earth elements such as Dysprosium, Terbium, Europium, Lutetium and Yttrium are even more vulnerable to supply shortages, since neither Molycorp nor Australia’s Lynas Corp. are producing significant quantities of these heavy rare earths. This remains the market opportunity that Avalon Rare Metals intends to serve with its Nechalacho Heavy Rare Earths Project in the Northwest Territories of Canada.

Other commentary on this subject provided by Avalon can be found in previous Industry Bulletins “Avalon comments on World Trade Organization ruling on China – rare earths dispute” (April 7, 2014) and “Avalon comments on China abolishing the rare earth export quota system and implementing a new export license process” (January 7, 2015).

About Avalon Rare Metals Inc.

Avalon Rare Metals Inc. is a mineral development company focused on rare metal deposits in Canada, with three advanced stage projects. Its 100%-owned Nechalacho Deposit, Thor Lake, NWT is exceptional in its large size and enrichment in the scarce “heavy” rare earth elements, key to enabling advances in clean technology and other growing high-tech applications. Avalon is also advancing its Separation Rapids Lithium Minerals Project, Kenora, ON and its East Kemptville Tin-Indium Project, Yarmouth, NS. Social responsibility and environmental stewardship are corporate cornerstones.

Modern life’s devices under China’s grip?

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 8:57 AM on Monday, March 23rd, 2015

From smartphones to cars and defense missiles, modern U.S. life depends on rare earth elements but China dominates the industry

Editor’s Note: In September 2014, while we were working on this story, a Pentagon spokesman emailed us to say:

“The Department of Defense is confident in the ability of the defense industry to remain supplied with all necessary rare earths for U.S. defense acquisition programs. The Department continuously monitors and assesses its raw materials requirements, and if necessary, will again take action to ensure their availability to the defense industrial base.”

That confidence is at odds with the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office, which issued a report on July 3, 2014 that concluded:

“DoD [Department of Defense] lacked a comprehensive and reliable process to assess REE supply and demand…. [and] As a result, DoD may not have identified all REEs with expected shortfalls, increasing the risk that those shortfalls will adversely affect critical weapons systems production in the DIB, and overall DoD readiness.”


The following is a script from “Rare Earth Elements” which aired on March 22, 2015. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Graham Messick and Kevin Livelli, producers.

What do cars, precision-guided missiles and the television you’re watching right now have in common? They all depend on something called rare earth elements, unusual metals that are sprinkled inside almost every piece of high-tech you can think of. Most people have never heard of them. But we have become so reliant on rare earths that a few years ago, an intense global power struggle broke out over their free flow. The reason is that one country has a virtual monopoly – roughly 90 percent — of the mining, refining and processing of rare earths — China. And in 2010, it used that power to disrupt the world’s supply. It’s especially troubling, because it was the United States that started the rare earth revolution in the first place.

Rare earth elements: Not so rare after all

It all began here at this mine in Mountain Pass, California, an hour west of Las Vegas, when geologists first identified rare earth elements deep in the Mojave Desert. They were considered geological oddities, until the 60s when it was discovered that one of these elements, “europium,” enhanced the color red in TV sets and soon the rare earth industry was born.Constantine Karayannopoulos: Rare earth chemistry is fascinating. There’s so many more things that we could be doing with rare earths.

Constantine Karayannopoulos, chairman of Molycorp, which has owned and operated the Mountain Pass mine for six decades, took us to the heart of the operation.

mountainpass.jpg

Mine in Mountain Pass, California
CBS News

Lesley Stahl: Is this considered a big mine?Constantine Karayannopoulos: In terms of rare earth standards, yes. It’s one of the biggest in the world.

Lesley Stahl: Are we actually walking on rare earth elements right now?

Constantine Karayannopoulos: We’re physically on the ore body.

Lesley Stahl: We are right on it?

Constantine Karayannopoulos: It starts at the top of the mine, then comes down and we’re walking on it and it goes in that direction.

So what are rare earth elements? If you ever took high school chemistry you learned that they’re clumped together at the end of the periodic table…atomic numbers 57 through 71… and they have difficult-to-pronounce Greek or Scandanavian names.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, terbium…

Some of them are phosphorescent. Erbium amplifies light, and is used in fiber-optic cables. Gadolinium has magnetic properties and is used in MRI machines and X-rays. As for neodymium? You may be carrying some of it in your pocket.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Next time your phone vibrates, think of us because the vibration motor is a small motor that contains a tiny neodymium magnet in it.

Karayannopoulos showed us around a new model home to illustrate that rare earths are making our appliances energy efficient like state-of-the-art refrigerators, touch screen thermostats, energy efficient light bulbs, the air conditioning systems. They’re also in our cars in the form of catalytic converters, sensors and hybrid car batteries.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Hybrids, in particular use a lot more because they contain electric motors that would not function without rare earths.

A Prius has roughly 25 pounds of rare earths. And they’re hidden in plain sight in our every day lives, in our computers and gadgets, even the lights and cameras we used to film this story are chock full of rare earths.

Lesley Stahl: What I’m getting from you is that modern life depends on these elements.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Absolutely.

Despite their name – rare earths are not rare. Small amounts can be found in your backyard. They’re trapped in what looks like ordinary rock.

But there are only a few places on earth with concentrations high enough to mine.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Rare earths normally are found in very, very low concentrations. This is probably running something in the 25 percent grade.

Lesley Stahl: That’s good?

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Which is remarkable. To anyone who has ever worked with rare earths, this is a thing of beauty.

But getting the rare earths out of that rock is nasty business requiring toxic acids and lots of water. In fact, the mine was shut down by the state of California in 1998 after radioactive water seeped into the surrounding Mojave Desert from an underground pipe. The mine lay dormant for a decade, giving China an opportunity.

Dan McGroarty: The Chinese made a very conscious decision to enter that industry.

Dan McGroarty was special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and today advises the U.S. government on critical materials. When the Molycorp mine closed, he says China was already well on its way to becoming the king of rare earths.

Dan McGroarty: There’s a point at which the lines cross. The United States production declines. Chinese production’s ramping up. Those lines cross somewhere around 1986.

Lesley Stahl: So how did they pull it off? What were the factors that allowed them to basically take this away from us?

Dan McGroarty: Well, the advantage of lower labor costs, would be a place to start. Also, environmentally, very, almost no environmental constraints around mining–safety considerations for the miners doing mining, in huge contrast to the United States. So, that translates directly into lower pricing. And lower pricing can push other people out of the market.

Lesley Stahl: And that’s basically what happened?

Dan McGroarty: That’s basically what happened.

The Chinese also had orders from the top. In a little-noticed speech in 1992, Deng Xiaoping signaled China’s intention to corner the market.

Lesley Stahl: What exactly did he say?

Dan McGroarty: ‘The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths.’

Lesley Stahl: He actually said that, Deng Xiaoping.

Dan McGroarty: Actually said that. I think it’s fair to say, at that point, people in the rest of the world, who had been saying, ‘What are – what is he talking about?’

Lesley Stahl: Just went right over our heads.

Dan McGroarty: I think so.

Lesley Stahl: Did we just not foresee what they foresaw?

Dan McGroarty: It’s extraordinary if they actually foresaw all the uses. Our designers and developers advanced the miniaturized applications for laptops and cell phones while the Chinese were going after the metals and materials out of which these things are actually built.

Lesley Stahl: How did they get the know-how?

Dan McGroarty: An enormous amount of investment. It’s kind of like the Chinese moon shot, the moon program.

China poured billions into the industry, ignoring the consequences. We obtained this video from a freelance cameraman showing the area near Baotou, China’s rare earth capital, where the air, land and water are so saturated with chemical toxins, the Chinese have had to relocate entire villages. This is one of the few places where rare earths are turned into metals, which are then alloyed — or blended — into things like permanent magnets.

Ed Richardson: These are magnets that once you magnetize them, they stay that way.

Ed Richardson, president of the U.S. Magnetic Materials Association, says the most important use of rare earths is in magnets. Only a small amount can produce magnets able to lift a thousand times their weight.

Ed Richardson: This is a cell phone.

He showed us how miniaturized rare earth magnets can be.

Ed Richardson: So I’m going to take it apart layer by layer and we’re going to get to the point where we can actually see the magnets, the rare earth magnets that are inside there.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, let me see this.

Ed Richardson: There’s three little magnets in there.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, one, two, three.

Ed Richardson: Right. If you put the paperclip you can see how it sticks.

Lesley Stahl: And this little tiny thing is the speaker.

Ed Richardson: Right. This is how devices have gotten small, very powerful, because the magnets are so powerful, you don’t have to use much of it.

The U.S. developed this technology, but China bought most of it right out from under us. For instance, in 1995, China bought the biggest American rare earth magnet company, “Magnequench” which was based in Indiana.

Ed Richardson: When they bought the factory, they now had the patents. They now had the equipment. And they actually had some of the Magnequench employees in the United States go to China and teach the people how to make the products.

Lesley Stahl: Did we not understand the strategic importance of keeping that industry here?

Ed Richardson: We didn’t get it and unfortunately the technology was transferred to China before that technology was appreciated. And now, we’re seeing so many, for instance, defense systems that are dependent on it.

Lesley Stahl: Does that make us dependent on China for our defense systems?

Ed Richardson: Oh, we are very dependent on China.

Lesley Stahl: We are dependent on China for our weaponry.

Ed Richardson: Right.

A prime example of that is the new F-35 fighter jet, the most technologically advanced weapons system in history. Each one contains nearly half a ton of rare earths. Former White House Official Dan McGroarty says that’s just for starters.

Dan McGroarty: The guidance systems on weapons system and tomahawk cruise missile, any of the smart bombs have rare earths in them. Lasers. I’d be hard-pressed to name anything that we would consider worth building today and going forward that would not have a rare earth compound in it.

Lesley Stahl: Because of this. Because of the monopoly on rare earths, does China threaten our national security?

Dan McGroarty: Unchecked, yes.

What finally woke up the U.S. government was an incident at sea in 2010. A Chinese fishing trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard ship in a territorial dispute.

The Japanese seized the boat’s captain… and two weeks later, China stopped shipping rare earths to Japan.

Dan McGroarty: The Chinese cut them off. And for 30 to 40 days, the rare earths did not flow to Japan. So it was a real shot across the bow for the Japanese that this is something that you have to be worried with.

It was a wake up call. Finally, 20 years after Deng Xiaoping’s speech, rare earths were on the U.S. radar screen.

[President Obama: This case involves something called rare earth materials…]

President Obama announced a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization against China for creating shortages for foreign buyers and last August the WTO ruled against Beijing.

No one in the Obama administration would talk to us on camera about rare earths and our dependence on China… including the Department of Energy… the Pentagon… or the U.S. trade representative. Even the private sector didn’t want to discuss the problem.

Lesley Stahl: We tried to get interviews with heads of companies that use the magnets and other products coming out of China, and they would not talk to us. Is there fear in high-tech companies that if they say something negative, maybe China won’t sell them what they need?

Dan McGroarty: I think that there is grave concern in these companies, but perhaps not a willingness to talk about that on a street corner.

So what is the U.S. doing to restore the industry here? Out in California, Molycorp was allowed to re-open after it developed new technology that protects the environment. But even when it’s at full capacity, the mine will only produce a fraction of the world’s supply of rare earths.

The Pentagon has begun stockpiling rare earths, and industry is researching new technologies that would replace them.

Lesley Stahl: Do you get any help from the U.S. government? They want to have a rare earth industry here.

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Encouragement, yeah.

Lesley Stahl: Encouragement, that’s it?

Constantine Karayannopoulos: Yeah.

The government is not offering incentives like tax breaks or subsidies that would lure businesses into the market.

Lesley Stahl: What needs to change to bring more of the industry back to the United States?

Constantine Karayannopoulos: First of all, we need to take a long-term view. It took 20 years to lose the dominant position– at least 20 years. And it’s probably going to take us 10, 15 years, if we execute, for some of these supply chains to start coming back.

But trouble is once again looming for the U.S. rare earth industry. Since restarting operations two years ago, Molycorp’s mountain pass mine has yet to turn a profit, and so deeply in debt that just last week, its own auditor warned it may not be able to stay in business.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rare-earth-elements-china-monopoly-60-minutes-lesley-stahl/