Champion Breweries stocks are up by more than 58% in just six trading sessions as buying interests by investors continue to prop the shares of the company upon the expectation of a mandatory takeover by Heineken.

Findings by Nairametrics at the close of trading today, 25th of January 2021, revealed that the share price of Champion Breweries has increased from N1.35 to N2.14 in just six trading sessions on the NSE.

This indicates that the shares of Champion Breweries Plc increased by 58.52% between the close of trade on Friday 15th of January, and Monday 25th January 2021.

It is essential to understand that buyers dominated trading activities on the company’s shares on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange as the market price of the company’s shares went up by 9.74%, less than 20 minutes after the NSE opened, as buying pressure by investors continue to push the shares of the company higher.

The drive behind the increase in Champion Breweries shares

Investors’ buying interests in Champion Breweries Plc shares, was said to have been triggered by the expectation of a mandatory takeover by Heineken through its Special Purpose Entity, Raysun Nigeria Limited, which investors believe would birth a potential merger with the largest Brewer in the country, Nigerian Breweries Plc.

Recall that Nairametrics reported that, Raysun Nigeria Limited, a Special Purpose Entity (SPE) wholly-owned by Heineken Brouwerijen B.V., acquired 1,903,609,538 additional shares of the brewery company, worth N4.95 billion on 7 January 2021, at a price of N2.60 per share.

The acquisition took Heineken’s total stake in Champion Breweries to 6,633,043,538 or 84.72% (indirectly).

What you should know

• Since the news of Heineken’s indirect acquisition of additional shares in Champion Breweries through Raysun Nigeria Limited was disclosed on the 8th of January 2021, shares of the company have appreciated by 110%.
• The YTD gains of the shares of Champion Breweries on NSE, at the close of trading activities today currently stands at 148.84%.

American biotechnology firm, Moderna Inc. on Monday announced that it is launching a trial of a new Covid-19 vaccine as it warned that its current shot was less effective in tackling the strain that emerged in South Africa.

Moderna said it is accelerating work on a covid booster shot to guard against the recently discovered variant in South Africa.

According to the company, Laboratory tests show Moderna’s Covid-19 jab still works against the variant named 501Y.V2, which emerged in South Africa, and B.1.1.7, which was first discovered in the UK.

It however warned that the neutralising antibody response to 501Y.V2 was sixfold lower compared to the original variant, raising concerns that immunity to it may wane significantly, particularly in older people.

“Out of an abundance of caution and leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging variant booster candidate against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa into the clinic to determine if it will be more effective to boost titers against this and potentially future variants,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said.

What you should know

• On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House health advisor said that new data had shown that the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective against new and more contagious strains of the coronavirus.
• Also, a team of researchers working with South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases stated that the 501Y.V2 shows substantial or complete escape from neutralising antibodies in COVID-19 convalescent plasma.
• According to reports by South African researchers, the 501Y.V2 variant is 50% more infectious than previous ones. It has already spread to at least 20 countries since being reported by the World Health Organisation in late December.
• Meanwhile, the total confirmed cases of the virus is currently at 99.85 million with over 2 million deaths worldwide.

Widely respected crypto trader, Michaël van de Poppe recently unveiled the list of cryptos expected to do very well in 2021 amid the prevailing bullish run in the Crypto verse.

He started by mentioning Polkadot (DOT) and looking at levels where investors can buy on dips.

“We do see these retests at $15. That was one of the levels I discussed. Another one is this $13-level which is lower timeframes and then we’ve got this area around $10.50,” he said.

Polkadot protocol connects private and public chains, oracles future technologies, and permission-less networks allowing such independent networks to share information and transactions through the Polkadot relay chain,

Van de Poppe expects the next leg of the bull run to catapult DOT to his targets at $25, $29, and $45.

In addition to Polkadot, the analyst says he’s also bullish on smart contract platform Cardano (ADA), blockchain for enterprise solutions Zilliqa (ZIL), hybrid blockchain platform ICON (ICX), high throughput blockchain Elrond (EGLD), and interoperable blockchain network Cosmos (ATOM).

Cardano is a type of blockchain that permits people to receive and send funds.

• ADA coin is the name of the cryptocurrency.
• It uses the Cardano blockchain and it also allows people to design smart contracts just like Ethereum.

Elrond is a type of blockchain architecture, created to facilitate a 1000-fold cumulative improvement in the execution of speed.

Its architecture combines a secure Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm facilitating unlimited scalability.

Zilliqa is a type of cryptocurrency that focuses on making blockchains more scalable and much faster; It uses sharding technology to simplify the consensus process so that blockchains like Ethereum can provide fast transaction processing successfully.

Another solid crypto on the crypto expert’s radar is Celer Network (CELR). He says the layer-two scaling platform can potentially rise to $0.035, representing a potential return of 400% from its present value of $0.007.

Last but not least is chainlink on the bias it has more room for upsides as its still upcoming crypto and has a solid fundamental;

“Chainlink itself has a very big market share of the oracle niche. Other oracles are just starting up their first,” Poppe said.

Chainlink is a blockchain that is designed to bridge the space between blockchain technology-based smart contracts (created by ETH), and other user programs.