Now that Chris Viehbacher, a German-Canadian national, has been fired as CEO of Sanofi, maybe the French firm will opt to hire another foreigner. Among those available is South African Jeremy Levin, who was ousted as CEO of Teva in Israel exactly a year ago. Both were ousted for daring to suggest that some verkers might have to be let go as the drug firms restructure.

The Fed will end its quantitative easing purchases of government debt as scheduled. This boosted the dollar against almost all freely tradable currencies, which in turn hurt gold which is priced in US$. And it may hurt US shares overall as it did  General Electric yesterday. While the Fed isn't buying government debt, Britain (and soon the EU and Japan) is still in QE mode. And the Fed still holds $4 trillion from its QE purchases. If nothing else, however, the end of its buying spree in US T-bonds will defang some of the anti-Fed rhetoric from US hard money stalwarts.

Another issue of Investor's Digest of Canada (dated Friday) and another quotation from this non-Canadian non-broker about a Canadian company, this one in a key source of Maple Leaf identity. The ID article quoted me about a maker of ice hockey equipment (formerly Bauer). Thanks to grandchild Claude, a hockey player, we cover hockey gear carefully.

Now that fraud has been added to the charges against executives at beaten down Tesco, I thank my lucky stars that unlike Warren Buffett I actually visited various London supermarkets. This led me to sell TSCDY which at last report Berkshire Hathaway still owned. I spotted that its US aims were too ambitious and that its UK competition was fierce because in my alternative life I am a Hausfrau. More neiges d'antan news below.

Thank you to all the readers who agreed with me that Doctors Without Borders medicos are heros rather than publicity seekers. You are a more internationally oriented group of readers than are served by www.stockgumshoe.com which published attacks on the charity.

*The Canada hockey stock is Performance Sports Group, formerly Bauer, NYSE-PSG, which also makes uniforms and equipment for lacrosse, baseball, and softball. I worried about its debt and wrote that it "missed the net" in its fiscal Q1 2015 but added that "EPS did light up the scoreboard." Getting quoted is sometimes no more difficult than having the time to write wittily, which is harder to do when the quarterlies pile in.

*As if the re-election of Dilma Rousseff were not bad enough news, Brazilian iron ore giant Vale reported a Q3 surprise net loss of $1.44 bn today, vs year-earlier profit of $3.5 bn. It was hit by lower iron ore prices. Credit Suisse cut the shares from neutral to underperform and they duly fell. Theories that VALE could make up in volume for the lower prices its ore pellets were getting from its main market, China, proved over-optimistic. Since it reports in dollars the fall of the Brazilian real added to the loss.

Vale also said it would reduce capex by $1-2 bn without telling us which projects would be halted but given the political climate they will have to tread carefully. The idea is to have a budget for 2015 lower than $12.5 bn and cut output to better meet global demand. Capex in 2011 was $18 bn so this is a comedown for CFO Luciano Siani. Vale must deal with iron ore off 40% y/o/y to about $80 per metric tonne because of oversupply and the failure of all 3 large mining firms, not just Vale, to lower production to match lower demand.

We hoped marginal producers like Chinese mini-mines would close down fast enough to offset the lower demand levels but it is taking longer than expected.

*Teva, a year after the boardroom coup, reported steady sales at $5.1 bn (after offsetting the divestiture of its US OTC lines, and after accounting for FX trends). Profits did better. Non-GAAP net income hit $1.5 bn, up 13% y/o/y, to $1.32/sh, up 4%.

Income under GAAP rules came to $876 mn, up 23%, or $1.02/sh, up 21%. The main reason for the boosted bottom line was strong cash flow, which tripled over the past year, plus continued growth in its main business of generics. Thanks to worldwide aging and governments seeking cost cuts, the push to generics was high. For Teva, this paid off with a 44.3% increase in generics sales and a 40% boost to generic profitability, to $2.432 bn and $556 mn respectively, both adjusted for exchange rates. US generics revenues actually fell by1% because of wider generic version of Adderall and Niaspan hitting the market. Euroland generics sales fell 4% in local currencies and 3% in US$ to $757 mn.

Teva's patented medicines did better, with sales up 5% to $2.2 bn, with the US accounting for $1.5 bn of the total (only up 2%.) Copaxone, Teva's blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug, saw sales up 5% to $1.1 bn, of which $800 mn were in the US. By converting patients and their doctors to a 3x/wk injection cycle, according to IMS data, Teva managed to win 28.3% of new USA MS prescriptions and 32.2% of total ones for Copaxone. Similar levels were achieved in Russia, a new MS market, but growth was lower in the rest of the world outside the US where overall Copaxone won a growth in y/o/y sales of 21% in US$, and 24% in local currencies.

Azilect/Agilect (rasagiline) against Parkinson's disease is another fast-grower among Teva's patented meds, from a lower base, with sales up 11% to $103 mn thanks to growth in the US and Europe. Profitability in these drugs was up 6% y/o/y despite higher costs for marketing.

Teva raised its EPS guidance for the whole year to $5.-5.1/sh from $4.9-5.1/sh earlier. It also increased its buyback program, according to CEO Erez Vigodman. (Teva non-GAAP adjustments are to exclude goodwill or goodwill impairment; costs and reserves for legal matters; cancellation of R&D; one-off restructuring expenses; and regulatory actions and the related tax benefits. The idea is to treat the accounts of a continuing business.) Teva was up yesterday.

Exercise Caution

*Anton Oilfield Services issued a profit warning along with its Q3 results. For the 9 mos YTD it lost just under RMB 130 mn which zapped its cash on hand, now RMB 414.7 mn. It reported to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that shareholders stand to see attributable profits this year fall 80% from prior year and that no revenue growth is expected. It blamed “adjustment in the domestic market [ie China] which remains difficult and competitive and has led to downward pricing pressure” and also cited “resources committed to the development of new business, and the increase in financing costs.”

Chairman Luo Lin urged “shareholders and potential investors to exercise caution when dealing in the shares of” ATONY. It will report on 2014 overall in late Mar. 2015. Thanks to reader JS for filling in for young Vivian Ng who is hanging around under a yellow umbrella rather than covering ATONY for us. Schlumberger (SLB) owns 20% of Antonoil bought as a play on Chinese fracking. We bought for the same reason, led on my my namesake in Hong Kong.

*Novo Nordisk a/s this morning reassured investors that there will be no slow-down in the growth of the insulin market, as was suggested by the since-departed CEO ofSanofi. NVO Danish shares rose 3% in reaction. Novo also reaffirmed its 2015 forecasts of single-digit sales growth and a ~10% rise in operating profit, similar to what it also expects in 2014. Novo Q3 net profit rose a modest 1.2% to DK 6.5 bn ($1.1 bn) on sales up 8.5% to 22.25 bn kroner. Its new diabetes drug, Victoza and its insulin rival to SNY's Lantnus, Levemir, both beat analyst forecasts.

However, fiercepharma.com, a blog, says that NVO is sounding “more cautious on Tresiba, its new insulin” which has a longer action period. It is still awaiting FDA OK, now delayed for launch to as late as 2017 because of more study being required. Tresiba is already on the market in Europe.

The new trials may let things be speeded up with the US regulators if they pan out. Long-lasting insulin would be a blockbuster for Novo if it gets approval. Our FDA is worried about weight gain and because the new product is made up of two drugs, combining Tresiba with existing Victoza.

*I am too shell-shocked to advise anyone to buy Antonoil under current circumstances. But among raw materials, oil being in surplus has some good effects. Consider fertilizer, which mixes urea, nitrogen (ammonia), and phosphates. Ammonia is now in short supply because Ukraine exported 46% less in Q3 this year than last, for obvious reasons, and with other factors this cut supplies and boosted the price. Urea, much of which comes from China, also is in short supply. But phosphates because of problems of one of the price-setting cartels, in the former Soviet Union. We own a supplier of all 3 components of plant food, Agrium, AGU, of Canada, home of the other other (legal) potash cartel.

The USDA says that global grain stocks are at 78 days of consumption, up 5 days from last year. Strong harvests threaten fertilizer prices. The UN FAO says cereal prices are 14% below the 5-yr average now.

We are now moving into the high season for fertilizer application in the southern hemisphere where grain surpluses are not as high as in North America and Europe. After Brazil's rains failed last year, prices rose and surpluses fell in the southern hemisphere, particularly for soybeans. So I expect a good market in Australia and if the rains come in Brazil as well.

Sellers of Vale Buying CZZ?

*Cosan (CZZ) as a logistics play is attracting foreign investors and the share is up 3.7% so far, maybe from sellers of Vale.

*Barrick Gold (ABX) whose bonds we own beat analyst forecasts with its Q3 results despite the lower gold price.We sold the stock but will benefit from better margins thanks to lower spending and lower costs per oz of the yellow metal. This may lead to a re-ranking of our 06849RAF9 4.4% North American bonds in US$ which run till May 2021 and are already ahead of par.

Bare Healthcare

*I had problems deciphering the Compugen conference call transcript. I couldn't listen to it live because there were too many reports (as again yesterday.) The big boo-boo was that the transcript talks about “Bare Heathcare”, when CGEN's notable deal was with Germany's Bayer AG pharma arm. So I told the company IR about the error on www.seekingalpha.com and she wrote back from Tel Aviv: “I can't even begin to tell you all the mistakes in the Seeking Alpha transcript, but a deal for Bare Healthcare is definitely one of the better ones.” Seeking  Alpha charges companies for producing transcripts of their conference calls and then outsources the transcription to untrained Indians.

Fund Notes

*Investing in campuses of International College for Experienced Learning (ICEL) in Mexico City, is the latest whiz idea from Fibra Uno, the oldest and wildest Mexican REIT, according to Eduardo Garcia, as it wants to buy a portfolio of college buildings worth over NMP 3 bn ($225 mn). The ICEL holdings are 148,000 sq meters in a dozen buildings in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, and Guardalajara, the FBASF statement said, “gaining an additional method to meet the needs for growth”. Fibra Uno could use surplus college acrage for other purposes than education to boost revenues.

Vivian adds: ICEL is part of a private international college conglomerate, Laureate International Universities, which operates accredited colleges and trade schools in Peru, Chile, and Spain, as well as in Mexico, the USA, France, Britain, Italy, the Middle East and North Africe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Eduardo, who edits sentidocomun.co.mx, is covering the analyst presentation by Fibra Uno on its plans to raise huge amounts of new capital to invest.

*Steven Romick, who manages FPA Crescent Fund, has bought into Naspers. Modestly, Harry Geisel who tipped NPSNY in the first place, remarks that China was not part of the equation as nobody knew about Tencent, TCTZF, when we bought in. “I'd rather be lucky than smart.”

*Western Asset Emerging Market Income Fund, EMF, reported that 95% of its investments are denominated in US$, 58% of this sovereign debt and the remainder corporate. By size its largest holdings are in Mexico, at 17.4% and Brazil, at 13.5%, with single digit sums in Russian, Turkey, Colombia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and India. The missing country is Argentina.

Neiges d'antan

*London AIM-listed China Chaintek, which has been quarantined in my main brokerage account by e-trade for fear not of Ebola virus, but of intermittent pricing, will pay a dividend of 2 UK pence/sh in the form of new shares worth 53.8 pence per share (based on the Oct. 23-7 prices.) You can get your broker to seek cash if you want; I am focused on just getting anything at all. If the mid-market quote of the stock by the final date (tomorrow) is 15% of more over the level of Oct. 23-7, all shareholders will get cash. CTEK-AIM and in my account #C033276

The saga of Chinese AIM shares looks like another ripoff because my proceeds from selling Camkids stateside was 10% below the price posted overnight in London. CAMK.L is also Chinese. We own a third one as well, Naibu, NBU, in our e-trade roach motel account where it is listed as #N-17399. You can buy but you cannot sell these in a “global trading account”. Nor can you track them unless you get data from London as I do.

*While I feel smart about Tesco, I was not as quick to exit Barclays which now reported a poor quarter and which is also under attack for fiddling its accounts. We bought BCS thinking it could wipe out the US competition thanks to covering both commercial and investment banking. It couldn't and the combo added new problems rather than solutions.