NK Beale knew something was wrong when her boss started sending her listings for other job openings.

“My manager was advising me to put in my notice,” said Beale, who is 40 and lives in Washington DC. “It was kind of weird, because we had a pretty good relationship, and I felt as though he was someone I could trust.”

There had been a shift in leadership at her tech company during a tumultuous time in the industry, with mass layoffs at Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Beale wondered if maybe her boss had encouraged her to put in her notice before they had a chance to officially lay her off so the company wouldn’t have to pay severance. The stress of it all started to affect her sleep and wellbeing.

When it got to be too much, Beale’s partner suggested that she speak to an old colleague named Cierra Gross, who founded an independent human resources consulting firm called Caged Bird HR.

For $99, Gross and her staff listen to workers’ complaints about harassment, discrimination, or other job-related issues – stories those workers don’t feel comfortable sharing with their own employers’ HR representatives. Workers at Google, Netflix, Amazon, Uber and Meta have all used Caged Bird, according to Gross. She also says Caged Bird wrote the résumé for a candidate who ended up a state senator, and helped a woman who was about to quit her job negotiate a $30,000 severance.

People usually reach out to Caged Bird after experiencing discrimination or issues with compensation. Over 80% of its clients also say work has caused some sort of mental anguish, according to Gross.

A survey published last month found that more than a third of 1,005 small-business workers in the US didn’t trust their HR departments. In a 2021 survey of 1,000 workers at UK organizations with more than 250 employees, 47% reported that they didn’t trust HR to help with conflict resolution. More than two in five respondents didn’t believe that the department would act impartially, with 43% saying they think senior staff members were favored in workplace disputes.

This wariness creates an opening for an independent HR service to act as a confidant, support system, lawyer (or at least someone who knows a lawyer), and whatever else a worker doesn’t feel they can find in-house. The Guardian spoke with two companies that have jumped into this field.

Caged Bird’s clients must first fill out a form explaining who they are, where they work and what’s going wrong. A representative then calls to explain their rights as workers and to give their professional opinion on how things should be handled. Caged Bird then drafts documents that might be helpful to the client when the client speaks to their employer’s HR department, such as a letter of resignation, a script for a pay negotiation, or a letter that reports discrimination.

Caged Bird does not negotiate fair labor practices with a company on behalf of a collective workforce like unions do, and it rarely interacts directly with a company’s HR department.

“Sometimes we do allow a support person to come to meetings between a client and their employer, but then our involvement is very limited,” Gross said. “In those cases we’re not actually allowed to talk during meetings. Even when we ghostwrite documents for a client, we don’t send it directly to their employer. We give it to the client and it’s up to them to send it to whoever they need to.”

After consulting with Caged Bird, Beale decided to take a leave of absence from her job due to stress – a lifeline she hadn’t realized was available to her. “They let me know the options most companies don’t want you to know. It was pretty simple for me to get together the documents that I needed for leave,” she said. After a few months, she went back to work feeling recharged. She later found a new job in media and entertainment with a better work-life balance.

Most workers have probably heard the phrase “don’t trust HR” or “HR is not your friend” at some point in their careers. Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, says the problem is that many employees don’t understand how HR fits into a company as a whole, particularly when it comes to issues of discrimination.

In recent years – especially after the #MeToo movement elevated awareness of workplace sexual harassment – employers have boasted a zero-tolerance policy on the matter. “That makes workers think that HR are like the internal police,” Cappelli said.

It can also be tempting to view HR as an independent entity dedicated to workers’ wellbeing – something analogous to a union shop steward. But that’s often too idealistic of a comparison.

“What people don’t understand is that ultimately, HR works for the company and the employer organization,” Cappelli explained. “They have no particular obligations for you. What they do for the most part is try to nudge the organization and the leadership in the right direction, which is about all you can expect them to do.”

That’s not enough for some workers, especially a post-#MeToo world. In the seven years since the harassment awareness hashtag snowballed into a full-on movement, many workers have hoped that the deluge of stories might lead to better conditions. The same could be said after 2020’s so-called “racial reckoning”, when CEOs preached diversity and inclusion in a way that felt more performative than purposeful.

Gross spent years working in HR for Google and ExxonMobil, but she left corporate America in 2022 after suffering burnout and depression. As implied by the name – a nod to the poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – and the fact that Gross is a Black woman with lived experience of workplace discrimination, Caged Bird’s earliest clients came due to issues of racism or sexism.

“The first year we started, it was 99% Black women and 1% everyone else,” Gross said. “Last year, it was 68% Black people, and the second highest was Latinas, white people, followed by members of the LGBT community of all demographics. So as the brand continues to grow, we’re starting to reach a broader demographic.”

If an employee wants to confront a co-worker or boss who, for example, won’t stop with the unwanted come-ons, they can enlist BeeMail, a service that sends warning emails to offenders accused of sexual harassment. The subject line of the email reads “Addressing Your Behavior”, with the body’s text written in a generic manner intended not to out a victim’s identity.

“This is not a gotcha moment,” the message reads. “We’ve all made mistakes. This email is intended to make you aware of the issue and to prevent further escalation involving your employer. We hope to see this as an opportunity to reflect on your interactions and do better moving forward.”

Cheri Wolf and Sandy Lisonbee launched BeeMail earlier this year. Each BeeMail message to an accused harasser links to their non-profit, The Wolf and the Bee, which provides resources to help workers and their employers resolve workplace disputes.

“If you Google ‘someone has accused me of harassment at work’, every single result comes from the angle of what to do if you’ve been falsely accused,” Wolf said. “But what should you do if you’ve actually done something? We found literally no tools from the harasser’s perspective. We realized this puts the burden of fixing a problem on the victim.”

It costs $25 for an accuser to send a BeeMail – the founders call the fee a “donation”, since the price helps fund their non-profit. The message can only be sent one time, so that BeeMail itself is not used as a tool of harassment. Wolf and Lisonbee worked with attorneys to make sure that the service did not violate any privacy or labor laws.

“For the most part, you’re going to have to continue to work with the person who’s harassing you,” Wolf said. “We need to start normalizing this idea that we can listen to feedback without getting defensive, and we can empower both sides of the situation to take responsibility for managing that process.”

The founders hope that their service will be used soon after someone experiences harassment for the first time, before behavior escalates.

“We understand that a BeeMail is not going to be effective for someone at a Harvey Weinstein level,” Lisonbee said. “It’s really about understanding and weighing out whether this uncomfortable process is also going to be empowering for you.”

Do not expect the BeeMail to go mainstream soon: only one person has used the service since it launched in February, though the founders say that some people have started the process but ultimately decided not to send the email.

Cappelli, the Wharton professor, says that what makes an independent HR service alluring to workers might not be its promised end result. “For a lot of people, being able to talk to someone about what’s happening and maybe having someone else know might make them feel better,” he said. “If this makes the person who’s reporting feel better, then it’s possible that these services actually do some good.”

Shares of Cava Group (NYSE: CAVA) caught investor interest when it went public last year as one of few exciting initial public offerings (IPOs). Cava operates a small chain of Mediterranean-inspired restaurants with big potential. Its stock is already up 63% this year on encouraging results and investor enthusiasm. Is it too late to buy?

Why Cava is getting investors excited

Cava is often compared to megastock Chipotle Mexican Grill. It offers a similar fast-casual experience, with healthy fresh fare at a moderate price point. Chipotle has demonstrated that it’s resilient and high-performing, and it’s rewarded shareholders handsomely. It’s no wonder investors are interested in what could be the next Chipotle.

So far, Cava has momentum. It’s still in its infancy, with 309 restaurants as of the end of 2023, or 72 more than the year before. It’s planning to open about 50 in 2024.

Sales increased 60% year over year in 2023, and comparable sales were up 18%. Average-unit volume (AUV) rose from $2.4 million in 2022 to $2.6 million in 2023, and restaurant-level profit margin rose 4.5 points from the previous year to 24.8%.

Even better, it has reported positive-net income every quarter since it went public and a full-year profit of $13 million after a $59 million loss in 2022. Who wouldn’t be interested in this stock when it’s demonstrating such fabulous performance?

What to be wary of now

Investing is about the future, not the past. Cava looks like it could have incredible potential, but it has a short track record right now. Management is guiding for comparable-sales growth to slow sharply to about 4% in 2024. It acknowledged that some of the growth it saw came from a “halo effect,” or customers being interested because of IPO hype.

That’s going to eventually disappear. Comparable-sales growth is important. It indicates that customers like the concept and that there’s organic-growth potential. It also contributes to higher profitability, since fixed costs can be spread among more revenue. This is something to watch.

The other major red flag right now is valuation. Cava stock is trading at around 10 times trailing-12-month sales and 230 times forward 1-year earnings. That’s a rich valuation. It could be justified if Cava is expected to grow at a high rate this year, but management is expecting things to slow down in 2024, with lower comps growth and margins. It did not provide guidance for net income. As growth decelerates, it might not be able to support this kind of valuation, which is a setup for a fall.

Finally, Cava is fairly new. It has a low number of stores right now that are just a sample size. Companies change as they get bigger and have different needs. Different regions also react differently to restaurant concepts, and Cava has yet to penetrate many areas of the country.

Management has to be able to grow and scale with demand. For example, coffee chain Dutch Bros has surpassed 800 stores and brought in an outside CEO to bring the company into its next growth phase. In contrast, Peloton Interactive grew very quickly, and its founder and CEO made some errors before handing over the reins to an experienced outsider.

Is this a long-term play?

Taking a position in Cava right now is investing in a company with lots of opportunity but a short track record of success. If you’ve eaten at a Cava, you might understand why the opportunity looks very compelling. But early-stage growth stocks are risky.

Cava does look like it could be an excellent long-term pick, but now might not be the right time to buy. It’s expecting pressure in 2024 with lower comps and restaurant-level profit margin. There’s a good chance 2024 won’t be as exciting as 2023. And considering the high valuation, I’d wait for a better entry point before I’d buy Cava stock.

Should you invest $1,000 in Cava Group right now?

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Jennifer Saibil has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill and Peloton Interactive. The Motley Fool recommends Cava Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

Jacksonville, F.L., April 02, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Third annual Jacksonville Mayor’s Masked Ball benefiting Edward Waters University was a smashing success. The festive event was held at the Hyatt Regency Riverfront on March 22, 2024, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and featured various speakers, an awards presentation, and the touching moment came when Cleve Warren was named this year’s Champion of Education.

Upon accepting the award, Warren stated, “On behalf of my family, Mayor Deegan, President Faison and Dr. Johnnetta Cole, I encourage all to give to the great work being done by the United Negro College Fund and Edward Waters University to develop young minds. “A mind is still a terrible thing to waste.” The ongoing gift of your valued time, precious treasure and enormous talent will help to ensure bright futures for generations to come.”

Reflecting on Mr. Warren’s impassioned plea and the remarkable achievements of the evening, A. Zachary Faison Jr., J.D., president and CEO, Edward Waters University, reminded us of all of the profound significance of collective action in advancing the cause of education.

“Tonight, we celebrate not just an event, but a movement of empowerment and opportunity,” President Faison said. “The Mayor’s Masked Ball has once again showcased the unwavering support for Edward Waters University and the UNCF’s mission to uplift HBCUs and their students. As we reflect on this evening’s success, let us remember the words of Mr. Cleve Warren: ‘A mind is still a terrible thing to waste.’ It is through the generosity of our sponsors, the dedication of our partners, and the commitment of our community that we continue to forge pathways to success for generations to come. Thank you all who have contributed to this noble cause and let us pledge to keep investing in the bright futures of our students and our society.”

Sponsors included Marquis Sponsor CSX, and Mayor’s Court Sponsors Florida Blue and the Hyatt Regency Riverfront.  Masked Court sponsors included Crowley Maritime, Wells Fargo, PEPS, JTA, Vystar Credit Union and JEA.  The event’s media partner was Action News Jax.

For 80 years, UNCF has strived to change the historically Black college and university (HBCU) narrative across the nation by equipping more HBCU students with the resources necessary to transition into college, graduate and ultimately establish careers that will build better futures for our society. UNCF is excited to celebrate this milestone anniversary and would like to acknowledge and thank the Coca-Cola Company, a Founding Sponsor, and Target, Presenting Sponsor.

“Since we were founded in 1944, UNCF has fueled HBCUs with vital resources to educate generations of African American and other minority students,” said Dr. Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, UNCF.

“This year marks our 80th anniversary. Our theme is ‘Honoring the Legacy, Transforming our Future.’ We will acknowledge and celebrate our founders, donors and philanthropic partners over the last eight decades. And we will be encouraging and transforming the next generation through education to achieve greater successes for our community and this nation. UNCF and HBCUs matter now more than ever as our students and institutions need ongoing support. I encourage you to invest in UNCF so together we can invest in and build future generations of Black college students who will lead this nation and contribute to our economy. Events like the Jacksonville Mayor’s Masked Ball help us do just that,” said Dr. Lomax.

The Jacksonville Mayor’s Masked Ball is still accepting donations. To learn more or to donate, please go to UNCF.org/jaxmmb.

 

                                                                        ###

About UNCF

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) is the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization. To serve youth, the community and the nation, UNCF supports students’ education and development through scholarships and other programs, supports and strengthens its 37 member colleges and universities, and advocates for the importance of minority education and college readiness. While totaling only 3% of all colleges and universities, UNCF institutions and other historically Black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding 15% of bachelor’s degrees, 5% of master’s degrees, 10% of doctoral degrees and 19% of all STEM degrees earned by Black students in higher education.UNCF administers more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship and fellowship, mentoring, summer enrichment, and curriculum and faculty development programs. Today, UNCF supports more than 50,000 students at over 1,100 colleges and universities across the country. Its logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and its widely recognized trademark, ‟A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”^® Learn more at UNCF.org or for continuous updates and news, follow UNCF on Twitter at @UNCF.

In case you haven’t noticed, the bulls are running wild on Wall Street. Following the 2022 bear market, all three major stock indexes — the ageless Dow Jones Industrial Average, broad-based S&P 500, and widely tracked Nasdaq Composite — have recently reached record-closing highs.

While a number of factors have contributed to this outperformance, including stronger-than-anticipated U.S. economic growth, the lion’s share of the heavy lifting has been done by the “Magnificent Seven.”

Image source: Getty Images.

The Magnificent Seven stocks have taken Wall Street to new heights

The Magnificent Seven are, as the name implies, seven of the largest and most-influential public companies. Listed in order of descending market cap, the Magnificent Seven stocks are:

There are two reasons investors have flocked to these seven businesses for years. The first, which I already alluded to, is their outperformance of the benchmark S&P 500. Over the trailing decade, Nvidia’s stock is higher by more than 20,000%, Tesla’s shares have gained north of 1,100%, and both Amazon and Microsoft are within striking distance of 1,000% gains. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is higher by a comparatively modest 183%.

MSFT data by YCharts.

The second factor that’s powered the Magnificent Seven are their undeniable competitive advantages:

• Microsoft has become a leader in the cloud, with Azure accounting for a quarter of cloud infrastructure service spending during the September-ended quarter. It’s also one of only two public companies to bear the highest credit rating possible (AAA) from Standard & Poor’s.
• Apple is consistently the most-dominant domestic smartphone company by market share. On top of its physical product innovation, it offers the largest share repurchase program of any public company in the U.S.
• Nvidia is the infrastructure foundation of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. The company’s A100 and H100 graphics processing units (GPUs) may account for more than a 90% share of GPUs deployed in high-compute data centers this year.
• Alphabet is something of a jack of all trades. Its internet search engine Google is a veritable monopoly, with a 92% share of worldwide search in February. Alphabet is also the parent of the second most-visited social site (YouTube) and No. 3 global cloud infrastructure service platform (Google Cloud).
• Amazon, similar to Alphabet, is a key player in multiple categories. Last year, it accounted for close to 38% of U.S. online retail sales. It’s also the leading global cloud infrastructure service provider, with Amazon Web Services comprising a 31% share of worldwide spend in the September-ended quarter.
• Meta Platforms holds the globe’s top social media real estate. Facebook is the most-visited social site, and its combination of apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, attracts close to 4 billion monthly active users.
• Tesla is North America’s leading electric-vehicle (EV) maker and the only pure-play EV company that’s achieved recurring profitability on the basis of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

But just because the Magnificent Seven have outperformed when looking in the rearview mirror, it doesn’t mean their outlooks are the same. As we push into the heart of spring, one Magnificent Seven constituent remains historically inexpensive and ripe for the picking, while another highflier may struggle to meet increasingly loftier investor expectations.

The Magnificent Seven stock to buy hand over fist in April: Meta Platforms

Among the seven industry leaders within the Magnificent Seven, the one that can confidently be purchased hand over fist by investors in April (with the purpose of holding shares for years to come) is social media maven Meta Platforms.

Every publicly traded company faces headwinds, and Meta is no exception. The biggest concern for investors is simply the health of the U.S. economy. Last year, Meta generated just shy of 98% of its $134.9 billion in sales from advertising. The ad industry tends to be ultra-sensitive to economic headwinds, with businesses paring back their spending at the first hints of trouble. If a select group of money-based metrics and predictive indicators are correct and a U.S. recession materializes, it could spell trouble for Meta.

But there’s another side to this story that’s even more important. Though economic downturns are normal and will occur whether we want them to or not, they’re historically short-lived. Only three recessions since the end of World War II hit the one-year mark, with none surpassing 18 months. Most periods of growth last for multiple years, which favors ad-based operating models like Meta.

As noted, Meta Platforms has the most-popular social media sites. Facebook recorded 3.07 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in the December-ended quarter, with 3.98 billion MAUs across the entirety of its platforms. Advertisers understand that no social media company offers broader access to consumers than Meta. As a result, it should boast enviable ad-pricing power more often than not.

Investors are also clearly excited about Meta’s AI ambitions. In particular, generative AI solutions give advertisers the ability to tailor their message(s) to individual users. We’re witnessing just the tip of the iceberg in terms of AI utility for Meta.

Something that often gets overlooked about Meta is that it’s swimming in cash. While skeptics have been quick to point to its growing losses at Reality Labs (the company’s augmented/virtual reality and metaverse division), Meta closed out 2023 with more than $65 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and generated over $71 billion in cash from operations last year. Its cash pile affords it the luxury of taking risks.

The cherry on top is that Meta is still historically cheap, even after more-than-quintupling from its 2022 bear market low. Shares are valued at 13 times estimated cash flow for 2025. This represents an 11% discount to the company’s trailing-five-year cash-flow multiple and is an absolute bargain with earnings slated to grow by an annual average of 26% through 2028.

Image source: Getty Images.

The Magnificent Seven stock to avoid like the plague in April: Nvidia

However, not all Magnificent Seven members are poised to be winners moving forward. The highflier that’s worth avoiding at all costs in April is megacap outperformer Nvidia.

Don’t get me wrong, there are viable reasons why Nvidia has gained nearly $2 trillion in market cap since the start of 2023. The company’s GPUs are nothing short of a go-to for data centers responsible for training large language models and powering generative AI solutions.

Something else that’s unquestionably helped Nvidia’s sales has been demand for AI-GPUs swamping supply. During the first-half of Nvidia’s fiscal 2024 (ended Jan. 28, 2024), the company’s cost of revenue actually declined! Though GPU production began to pick up during the fiscal fourth quarter, much of the company’s 217% increase in data center sales last year came from scarcity-driven pricing power.

But there are plenty of reasons to believe Nvidia’s headwinds will soon outnumber its tailwinds.

For example, Nvidia’s expanded production in the current fiscal year has the potential to be its undoing. Normally, increased production would lead to higher gross profit. But don’t forget that GPU scarcity is what drove the lion’s share of data center sales growth last year. As new competitors enter the space and Nvidia meets more of its customers’ demands, scarcity will taper and the company’s margins should retrace.

As I pointed out recently, competition is another concern — but not just from external competitors. The biggest threat to Nvidia’s sales may come from its top customers. Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Alphabet collectively account for about 40% of Nvidia’s sales; and they’re all developing AI chips for their in-house data centers. These internally developed chips will either complement Nvidia’s AI infrastructure and reduce the reliance of these four Magnificent Seven stocks on the AI kingpin, or they could replace Nvidia entirely. Either way, we’re likely witnessing a peak in orders from its top customers.

Regulators are capping Nvidia’s upside, too. In September 2022, regulators banned the export of Nvidia’s top-tier A100 and H100 chips to China. Though Nvidia developed toned-down versions of these AI-GPUs, known as the A800 and H800, U.S. regulators also banned the export of these chips in October 2023. Nvidia is missing out on billions of dollars in quarterly sales because of these restrictions.

Last but not least, every next-big-thing investment trend over the last 30 years has worked its way through an early stage bubble. Investors have consistently overestimated the adoption of new innovations/technologies for decades, and artificial intelligence is unlikely to be the exception. Note, I’m not saying AI and Nvidia can’t be wildly successful over the long run. Rather, I’m noting that history suggests Nvidia is in an early stage bubble because AI hasn’t matured as a trend. This makes Nvidia a stock worth avoiding in April.

Should you invest $1,000 in Meta Platforms right now?

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Sean Williams has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

New York, New York–(Newsfile Corp. – April 2, 2024) – WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of common stock of Shoals Technologies Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHLS) between May 17, 2022 and November 7, 2023, both dates inclusive (the “Class Period”), of the important May 21, 2024 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Shoals common stock during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Shoals class action, go to or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email or case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than May 21, 2024. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants misrepresented and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Shoals did not deliver electrical balance of systems (“EBOS”) products that met the highest levels of quality and reliability; (2) Shoals had received reports of exposed copper conduit in EBOS wire harnesses in a large number of solar fields and was aware that a significant portion of its wire harnesses had defects; (3) Shoals would have to incur between $60 million to $185 million in costs to remediate the wire shrinkback issue; (4) Shoals had understated its cost of revenue by millions of dollars; and (5) as a result, defendants’ positive statements about Shoals’ financial guidance, business, operations, and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the Shoals class action, go to or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor’s ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

——————————-

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
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We recently had our beloved springer spaniel put to sleep. He was 14, so a good age, and there was no other option after he suffered a stroke.

I phoned to cancel our pet insurance with Perfect Pet, only to be told we must continue paying until it ends in November. It said this was because we had already made a claim for an unrelated stomach issue.

That means another nine months of payments for a deceased dog.

Looking online, this seems to be common, but we, and other pet owners we know, had no idea.

I feel this is wrong, particularly for owners of older pets who are more likely to have to make a claim, and then face paying expensive premiums even after they die.

With the rising cost, increasing exclusions, and higher excess fees, it feels like pet insurance is becoming a waste of money.

GW, Hove

I was sorry to hear about the loss of your pet. Perfect Pet says it could not comment on individual cases, but explained it only collected outstanding premiums if a successful claim had already been made in the policy year.

It explains: “The contract is for the year, and, in return for the promise to pay the full premium, we pay out claims. We fully detail this in our policy wording and customer journey, and it is in line with general insurance practices.”

At £279, your annual policy looks well-priced in a market where premiums for dogs are up by 23% in the past year, according to the consultancy Pearson Ham. The average cost is £412, it says, but this masks big differences linked to the age of the animal. For a dog over 10 years old, the figure is £1,252.

You feel the industry treats owners of older pets unfairly. The claim you made was for £550, of which Perfect Pet paid roughly £300.

In a world where people complain about astronomical pet care costs, and the competition watchdog is investigating the veterinary market, this does not seem unfair.

What does surprise me, though, is that the role of insurance in this market does not feature more prominently in the Competition and Markets Authority inquiry.

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(RTTNews) – China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. or Sinopec (SNPMF) announced its heads of agreement or HoA with France’s TotalEnergies SE (TTE) to form a joint venture to produce sustainable aviation fuel or SAF from waste oils.

The production of SAF from waste oils will be done at one of Sinopec’s refineries in China. The partnership aims to achieve an annual production capacity of 230,000 tons, with the new production line co-operated by both entities.

The jet-fuel cooperation agreement was signed in Beijing, China by Sinopec’s Chairman, Ma Yongsheng and Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies.

Pouyanne noted that the project is central to TotalEnergies’ transformation strategy aimed at supporting the aviation sector’s carbon footprint reduction efforts. The company has set an ambitious target to produce 1.5 million tons of SAF annually by 2030.

In May 2022, China’s inaugural industrial-scale bio-jet fuel facility commenced pilot production at Zhenhai Refining & Chemicals. It achieved Asia’s first Global RSB biomass-based sustainable aviation feul certification later that year, and also obtained airworthiness certificates for domestically produced large-scale biojet fuels in September.

Sinopec said it also signed an MOU with Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce in Bangkok aiming further enhancement on product promotion and market expansion collaborations.

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