A "Preview of Coming Attractions"
Opportunities for building wealth ...
Sundays at the Patalon Homestead tend to be pretty routine …
My wife, my son and I catch up on house stuff; this weekend, for instance, I have to do a bit of a siding repair, finish the protective screen for my blueberry bushes and move a Giant Sequoia tree from the barrel it’s now growing in to a permanent home in our yard.
Joey and I usually tune into the NASCAR race du juor (he’s a HUGE Daniel Suarez fan; and it’s only been recently that I was able to replace my all-time-fave Sterling Marlin with John Hunter Nemechek, the son of a former Sterling stable-mate).
Joey and I motor over to have dinner with my Mom, Kathleen — a retired nurse who continues to teach us what kindness is all about.
And Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC) colleague Jack Delaney and I steal some time to strategize for the week to come.
Given the enthusiasm we’re seeing from the fast-growing SPC audience, we want to start sharing some of those discussions with you folks.
Consider it a combination of briefings on new developments in storylines I’ve shared and a “Preview of Coming Attractions.” Let’s take a look at:
💰The Largest Investment in Company History
More than $5 billion – that’s how much Eli Lilly & Co. LLY 0.00%↑ is investing to boost output at its Indiana-based manufacturing facility to keep up with surging demand for its “Blockbuster” weight-loss drugs: Zepbound and Mounjario. Zepbound – which just won Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in December – racked up sales of $517.4 million in the first quarter, thrashing estimates of $418.2 million. Mounjaro’s sales of $1.81 billion came in a bit lighter than the $2.08 billion forecast, but it’s “the why” that matters here. The shortfall wasn’t due to lack of demand; it was due to demand that far outstripped the company’s ability to meet it. And when a company recognizes a problem, and has a plan to fix it … well, that puts us on a good trajectory. The new facilities birthed from that previously mentioned $5.3 billion investment will help Lilly ramp up supply to meet that massive demand.
Shares of Eli Lilly are on a tear in 2024, up 37% compared to the 10% return of the S&P 500. But the good news is you’re still early if you’re an investor in a company like Lilly.
It’s all a part of the storyline I’ve outlined in “The Hunt for the Next Blockbuster Drug.”
🪙Sights on Silver
In an interview that led to my March 6 report, “Silver's Surge: $30 Soon ... $300 By 2030?,” Silver Stock Investor (SSI) Editor Peter Krauth told me that silver would hit $30 an ounce sometime in 2024 – and eventually go higher (even much higher) from there. At the time we published our report, silver was trading at about $23.87. It soared (that’s a fair descriptor) to a 52-week high of $32.51 an ounce on May 19 – for a 36% surge in just 74 days. There are different ways to measure this. But to give you some context, that’s roughly equal to a 177% gain over a full year.
Now trading around $30 per ounce, Peter says silver is, well, taking a bit of a breather — call it a consolidation respite — before heading higher.
That run could take it up to $50 — after which the metal has reached “uncharted territory.” And he still believes in that possible $300 target. For SPC Premium members, here’s an edited transcript of our “catch-up.”
💬 Friendly Chats
I’ve been talking with my good friend Matt Warder — the new helmsman at The Coal Trader.
I’ve known Matt for years — as a friend, collaborator and co-worker — and can tell the subscribers of that already superb publication that they scored big in having Matt take over for the also-excellent David Dyer.
Matt is a former Wall Street analyst, who specialized in coal. And I worked with him for years (we actually shared a pretty unique office in a converted brownstone) in a historic part of Baltimore. So I know that Matt’s expertise in coal translates into some fascinating (and wealth-building) insights about energy in general, and in the commodities space, too. He’s also got an amazing network. Matt and I are planning to have him share some of those insights with you folks here — probably starting with an interview in the next few weeks. So stay tuned.
🔥The New Cold War Heats Up
When we launched SPC, I told you all that the New Cold War was one of the top storylines I’d be following.
Talk about prescience.
As I shared here, Russia recently launched a suspected “satellite-killer” spacecraft — armed with a nuke and placed in an orbit that lets it “shadow” a U.S. spy satellite. And Washington issued new warnings about state-sponsored hackers going after critical U.S. infrastructure — this time our drinking water.
I followed up with a deep-dive analysis on a cybersecurity firm that I dubbed “The Cybersecurity Gunslinger Stock.” (Truth be told, I like the “investment case” for this so much that we may add it to our “Farm Team” — the list of stocks we’re screening for possible inclusion in the SPC Model Portfolio.)
Apple’a Next Act
And speaking — yet again — of storylines to follow and previews of coming attractions, how about the AI Era, where Apple Inc. AAPL 0.00%↑ will unveil more of its AI future at the 2024 edition of its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 10.
One of the strengths of SPC is the vast network of expert contacts I’ve built through the 20 years I spent as a national business reporter and the additional 20 years I’ve spent doing this — financial research and stock picking.
To give you folks a “sneak preview” of what Apple is cooking up, I dipped into that network last week through an interview with Apple and tech-trends expert David Zeiler.
But I’m not done. And I close this out by offering a “preview of a preview.”
Later this coming week, I’ll be sharing a briefing that further dimensionalizes what to expect from the iDevice king.
