Ohio, INTC, Chips, A Republican Governor And All That Jazz -- January 21, 2022

Ohio seems an unusual spot among the states so Ohio must have really, really played ball with INTC.

INTC is headquartered in California.

One would consider these states well ahead of Ohio:

• California -- blue
  
• Texas -- red
  
• Arizona -- more blue than red
  
• Washington state -- blue
  
• Alabama -- red but ....
  
• Upstate NY (Cornell, Ithaca) -- blue
  
• New Jersey (Princeton) -- blue
  
• Massachusetts (MIT, Harvard) -- blue
  

I don't "get" Ohio at all but haven't seen the reasons why INTC chose Ohio ... until now.

Here's the backstory: Here's how Ohio won a bid by Intel to build the world's largest chip factory.

https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/business/2022/01/21/how-mike-dewine-jon-husted-got-intel-come-ohio/9183683002/.

Let The Conspiracy Theories Begin -- January 19, 2022

Social Media -- January 18, 2022

Temperature curve: the human world will never control climate, we will be extinct long before then. Link here. 

Inconvenient, Bjorn Lomborg: new UK stats that despite temperature increased:

• cold day deaths declined every year by 25
• warm day deaths declined every year by 2

 

Are US Auto Manufacturers Doing Anything About This? January 17, 2022

Asia is winning the war for EV batteries -- link to ZeroHedge. 

• The global electric vehicle battery market has grown to $27 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand further in the coming years.
• The companies with the highest share in this new market are concentrated in China, South Korea, and Japan. 
• Asian companies account for as much as 80% of global electric vehicle battery production. 

At present, the ten manufacturers with the highest market share in terms of battery capacity newly registered in 2021 are all headquartered in Asian countries, mainly China, South Korea and Japan. 

The industry's top five manufacturers - CATL, LG, Panasonic, BYD and Samsung - together account for over 80 percent of global automotive battery production.

Throw in Tesla and where are the following getting their batteries:

• Ford
• GM
• Stellantis
• Daimler
• all the rest?

PC Sales Are Back To 2012 Levels, Up 34% From Their 2017 Nadir -- January 12, 2022

Link here.

• The PC market grew 14.8% in 2021, shipping the largest number of desktops, laptops, and workstations in a single year since 2012.
• It’s a noteworthy recovery for a sector that had been written off by tech investors as a sleepy field in decline as recently as a few years ago.
• The six largest PC companies by number of units shipped in 2021 were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Asus, and Acer, according to IDC.

From the article:

It’s a noteworthy recovery for a sector that had been written off by tech investors and operators as a sleepy field in decline as recently as a few years ago as smartphones became the most important and highest-volume product in the electronics business.

The recovery has been driven by lockdowns and the rise in remote work and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, as households purchased new laptops and PCs for schoolchildren in virtual classes and businesses bought equipment for employees working from home.

The recovery also happened in a year that was marked by temporary shortages in PCs, especially during the fall, driven by supply constraints from a global chip shortage.

So many story lines.

Just wait until Apple introduces the colorful desktop iMacs this spring.

GDP Per Capita -- January 12, 2022

Chart of the day: how incredibly wealth the US is. 

• check out North Dakota -- ND's GDP is greater than every country in the world except Luxembourg; and,
• ND's GPD per capita is #6 among the US states

 

 

 

Berkshire Hathaway's Energy Reach -- January 12, 2022

From a reader this morning;

In the political arena, and for the US consumer, killing the Keystone XL, was a true travesty. 

In the environmental arena, it was an even bigger travesty. Faux environmentalists felt that killing the Keystone XL would kill western Canadian heavy oil. Nope. They found a work-around and record amounts of heavy oil is making its way to the Gulf coast. The short term work-around was CBR. The longer-term work-around was expansion of existing pipelines.

But for investors, killing the Keystone XL was one of the best things that could have ever happened. Who benefited? Investors in:

• Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B)
• Enbridge (ENB)
• BNSF (wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway)

Now, let's take a look at a story I completely missed. From S&P Global, February 10, 2020. I do not know if these deals were all approved by regulators and were closed, but I assume they were. These were electric transmission lines, not crude oil pipelines.

Canadian and U.S. subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Energy have agreed to buy all of the shares of Enbridge Inc.'s Montana Alberta Tie Line, a 300-MW conduit that can carry power to grids in both regions, according to regulatory filings in both countries.

In a Feb. 7 filing with a commission of the Canada Energy Regulator, Enbridge said it "wishes to advise the commission that it has agreed to transfer 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of MATL [Montana Alberta Tie Line] to BHE Canada Holdings Corporation pursuant to a share purchase agreement dated January 17, 2020, subject to certain conditions." BHE Canada is an affiliate of Iowa-based Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

On Jan. 31, another Berkshire Hathaway Energy unit, BHE U.S. Transmission LLC, applied to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for approval to acquire the U.S. portion of the line. (FERC Docket EC20-34)

The Montana Alberta Tie Line, which went into service in 2013, is a 230-kV merchant line that and connects power grids in the two jurisdictions. While the system has two-way capability, it was mostly designed to move wind-generated electricity from Montana to Alberta, and all of the capacity moving north is secured under long-term agreements. The Canadian portion of the 345-kilometer line stretches about 123 kilometers to a substation at Picture Butte in southern Alberta, owned by AltaLink Holdings LP, which is a separate Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary. The U.S. portion of the line runs to Great Falls, Montana.

I think the takeaways from this short note are pretty obvious and I won't elaborate.