The Singing Machine Company, Inc. (OTCQX: SMDM) recorded revenue growth of 9% to $49.3 million for the nine months ended December 31, 2016, compared to $45.2 million for the comparable period in 2015 (http://dtn.fm/j9NfF). For the quarter ended December 31, 2016, sales dropped to $16.3 million compared to $20.7 million during the same period of the prior year. The company said that drop was due to the timing of shipments, which occurred earlier in 2016 than the prior year.

Singing Machine makes a line of karaoke products, offering the consumer access to some 1,300 songs. The music can either be downloaded or streamed. The Singing Machine home line is available in North America or internationally through mass merchant and online retailers. The company is also entering the toy business with Singing Machine Kids (http://dtn.fm/QyN7U), a range of 11 new products for children from preschool through elementary school. The line of sing-a-long products is being shown for the first time to buyers at the New York Toy Fair, February 18-21, 2017.

The company’s net income jumped 3.9% for the nine months ended December 31, 2016, to $2,685,561, up from $2,583,460 for the nine months ended December 31, 2015. For the three months ended December 31, 2016, sales dropped 21% to $16,319,804 compared to $20,667,069 for the comparable period the prior year. Similarly, net income dropped 35% to $1,312,158 for the three months ended December 31, 2016, from $2,006,913 during the same three-month period of the prior year.

Gary Atkinson, Singing Machine CEO, said, “This fiscal year we’ve grown net sales by 9% over last year and we’ve grown pre-tax net income by 33% to $4 million. On the product roadmap, we significantly expanded our distribution of our Digital Download Line of products and saw impressive growth in both downloading and streaming subscriptions.”

Bernardo Melo, VP of Sales, commented that ecommerce has grown to more than 18% of company sales. He said the company enjoyed an average 88% sell-thru across major retailers on both Black Friday and the Christmas season.

The company is unveiling its Singing Machine Kids line and will also, through its partnership with Stingray, offer a karaoke Sing-Along mobile app to be available in the fall. The app, available for both iOS and Android devices, will complement the Singing Machine Kids line.

The toy product line consists of 11 items, including:

• Bluetooth Recording Studio, a portable studio with six sound effects loaded in advance.
• Mic Guy Bluetooth Sing-Along, a battery operated system designed for the littlest singers.
• Candy House Sing-Along, a joyful speaker system with a colored lit roof top.
• Blackboard Calculator, designed to make math interactive and fun with the Wise Old Owl.

“We’re incredibly proud of our new kids line,” commented CEO Atkinson. “Not only have we designed a range of products that will enhance our mission of spreading joy through music, we have also created products that will help kids with a variety of early learning and developmental skills.”

For more information, visit www.SingingMachine.com

ORhub, Inc. (OTC: ORHB), is a cloud-based health care software-as-a-service company whose primary aim is to improve the outcome and reduce costs of surgical care in a variety of hospitals and health care institutions in the United States.

Because many hospitals still rely on paper documentation to track everything that occurs during an operation, there is more space for mistakes, missing information, delays, and payment problems, as well as, generally, less opportunity to effectively improve procedures. ORhub’s digital platform eliminates a variety of the limitations and problems inherent with paper documentation.

Aside from reducing potential mistakes, the platform creates automatic records, streamlines tasks to save time, and enables rich data analysis across all of the hospital’s cases. This allows health care institutions to more easily determine whether comparable surgeries cost the same, the types of implants needed and how they are used, and any inventory that needs to be restocked.

In recent news, the company went through a merger (http://dtn.fm/3bllA) between MemReg, Inc. and ORhub, Inc., with MemReg formally changing its name and ticker symbol to align with its new identity. It’s part of a process to put together initiatives for improving liquidity, strengthening brand recognition, and preparing for future listing on a senior exchange.

Most recently, the company expanded its pilot program (http://dtn.fm/kO4H7) to include one of the top five highest-volume orthopedic hospitals in America. This hospital has been given a five-star rating by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and has been ranked as one of the best orthopedic hospitals in the country two years in a row by U.S. News & World Report. In addition, it is the highest volume provider of joint replacements in California, according to California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), and is one of only eight hospitals in the state to be classified as a “Highest-Rate Hospital” for knee and hip surgery in 2016 by Consumer Reports.

In a news release, Chief Technology Officer Wesley Mitchell commented, “Our goal is to cut $250 billion out of annual U.S. health care spending by reducing cost and increasing efficiency in surgical operations, which is roughly one-third of the $3 trillion spent on health care in the U.S. every year. Moving forward with one of the most efficient hospitals in the nation gives us a platform to show that what we are doing can have a significant impact at any hospital, even one already praised for its efficiency.”

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ORhub.com

Net Element (NASDAQ: NETE), in a series of three 8K SEC filings from January 19, 2017, through February 8, 2017 (www.netelement.com/en/ir), has presented to Esousa Holdings, LLC purchase notices aggregating $1.35 million for 1,578,877 shares of its common stock at a price per share ranging from $0.83 to $0.861.

Net Element is a technology provider with a platform that integrates mobile and transactional services. Aptito is its point-of-sale brand, which is cloud-based. Its TOT Group subsidiary also handles transaction processing in the U.S. through Unified Payments. TOT Money is its Russia-based mobile payments provider. Net Element serves the restaurant, retail and travel industries, among others.

The company announced last year a $10 million stock purchase agreement with Esousa Holdings, LLC to provide liquidity. The most recent filings included an 8K on January 19, 2017, issuing a purchase notice to Esousa totaling $200,000 for 240,964 shares at $0.83 per share. Net Element issued another 8K on January 25, 2017, with a purchase notice to Esousa at $150,000 for 176,471 shares at $0.85 per share. Another 8K followed on February 8, 2017, specifying a purchase price of $1 million for 1,161,442 shares at $0.861 per share.

SeeThruEquity, an equity research firm, in December 2016 issued an update note to its report on Net Element and adjusted its target price per share to $2.45. In the revision, the research company expressed optimism about Net Element’s revenue growth of 10% year-over-year in 3Q16 to $14 million, up from $12.7 million in 3Q15.

At the same time, SeeThruEquity noted that Net Element had liabilities on its balance sheet of $16.8 million, inclusive of $4.2 million of financial debt. “We continue to see the balance sheet as an area to watch for NETE, as access to capital has been a swing factor in the performance of the stock,” it said, noting that Net Element has managed to grow but requires capital to finance its aggressive strategy. It noted Net Element’s $10 million stock purchase agreement (SPA) with Esousa Holdings, LLC.

In that July 6, 2016, agreement, Net Element stated that the use of any proceeds would be for working capital and general corporate purposes. The SPA has a 30-month term from its initial date. Among its terms, Net Element can present purchase notices to Esousa to buy an aggregate total of $10 million of its common stock at prices per share to be determined by the NASDAQ market.

For more information, visit www.NetElement.com

Attendees at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (February 13-16) at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle received a two-year update on CytoDyn’s PRO 140 as a single-agent maintenance therapy for HIV-1 infection. The poster presentation was from Dr. Kush Dhody, Senior Director, Clinical Operations at Amarex Clinical Research, on behalf of CytoDyn Inc. (OTCQB: CYDY). A follow-up discussion reviewing five abstracts, hosted by Karl Salzwedel of the National Institutes of Health and under the theme ‘I Want a New Drug’, is also scheduled and expected to feature a panel of distinguished participants, including CytoDyn CEO Nader Pourhassan.

PRO 140 has, so far, demonstrated a remarkable efficacy in HIV therapy, with its unique characteristics as a fully humanized immunoglobulin (Ig) G4 monoclonal antibody. Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins used by the immune system as a first line of defense against pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses. Each antibody is uniquely created to counter a specific antigen, which it then counters by flagging the intruder as such, to be destroyed by microphages, or by neutralizing it.

Vaccines use this response of the human immune system to build a shield against diseases like polio, smallpox, and a host of others. By injecting a small amount of the germ into the body, the antibodies specific to those antigens develop and are on hand to fight off subsequent attack from the infection. However, the science behind PRO 140 is based on monoclonal antibodies.

Monoclonal antibodies are antibodies engineered in the lab to serve as substitutes that can restore, enhance, or mimic the immune system’s attack on pathogenic cells, and they have been developed, to a large extent, for treating cancer patients. Now, PRO 140 is bringing aspects of that technology to the fight against HIV/AIDS while being tested in animals to explore cancer and other non-HIV indications.

Since PRO 140 is a humanized antibody, it is likely to have fewer side effects than a synthetic drug. Humanized antibodies are antibodies from non-human species that have been modified to ‘look like’ human antibodies.

In comments about its science (http://nnw.fm/vDcZ4), CytoDyn notes: “Monoclonal antibodies have come to represent one of the fastest expanding opportunities in the biotechnology/pharma sector. The ability to transition from research reagents generated in mice to fully humanized structures suitable for clinical and commercial development has provided some of the most effective and largest selling therapeutics over the last 10 years.”

On January 11, CytoDyn announced it had filed a request with the FDA for Breakthrough Therapy Designation for PRO 140 as a treatment for HIV-1 infection in treatment-experienced patients with virologic failure. Just the month before, the company announced the first Phase III clinical trial with PRO 140 as a single-agent maintenance therapy in virally suppressed subjects with HIV.

PRO 140 is considered one of the most advanced experimental monoclonal antibodies for HIV treatment, and has been used in more than 140 HIV-infected subjects in placebo controlled and open label FDA-approved clinical trials. The drug has been the subject of seven clinical trials, each demonstrating efficacy by significantly reducing or controlling HIV viral load in human test subjects and has been designated a “fast track” product candidate by the FDA.

For more information, visit www.CytoDyn.com

A SeeThruEquity report released in February revealed that ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. (OTCQB: CIIX), a specialized investment services company targeting primarily the Chinese-speaking population in the U.S., has made several investments in the global cannabis industry, increasing its growth potential. Still in the early stages of market penetration, the company cited significant potential in its legal cannabis initiatives. Catalysts for potential future growth include a current stake in Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: MDCL), a business with cultivation, production, and dispensary operations, which has already generated proceeds from stock sales.

The company’s recent achievements include completing a $5 million private placement of Series C-2016 convertible preferred stock, per a NetworkNewsWire release (http://dtn.fm/SEd6L). Revenue growth was reported for three consecutive quarters as the company was preparing to expand sales in the United States and China through a new website. Revenues were significantly higher over three- and six-month periods ended November 30, 2016, as operating revenues increased by 133% and 121% over those respective time frames. Long term plans include opening physical retail stores in the United States and elsewhere around the globe.

In January, the company launched its cannabidiol (CBD) health products store online, noted as the first of its kind in the Chinese language. The website www.ChineseCBDoil.com sells CBD-containing nutritional supplements and provides a portal for retail destinations to sell products in-store. Extracted from cannabis, CBD oil is non-toxic and non-addictive and is being increasingly accepted for its medicinal properties. Potential has been seen in the treatment of conditions such as anxiety and stress, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, and cirrhosis of the liver. In addition, the company plans to launch a mobile app for locating cannabis dispensaries and discussing related products in the U.S. This follows a December 2016 announcement (http://dtn.fm/K61pa) that it had formed an alliance with Shenzhen Yuanrong PE Capital, a private equity firm, to pursue medical/recreational cannabis business opportunities.

SeeThruEquity sees ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. as a high-risk/high-reward investment opportunity, with potential for further growth if there is renewed traction with its investor relations services businesses. The company reported revenue had reached $510,944 in the second quarter of fiscal year 2017, an increase from the August quarter revenue of $341,324. Also, it reported $1.4 million in assets and $636,345 in available cash during the first two quarters of fiscal 2017.

ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. was founded in 1999, in Colorado, to serve the U.S. Chinese-speaking population with stock market data and investment information. It is led by CEO Warren Wang, who was born in Shanghai, China, and has over 15 years of experience in the financial markets industry. He has worked in management, sales, project management, marketing, and accounting. Quoqi Deng is the company’s CFO and previously worked with the Shenyang Technological Development Zone for 12 years, introducing billions in overseas capital to fund a major construction project in China. The company aims to inform individual investors so they can make financial decisions and achieve their goals. It uses an investment method that integrates support, web-based tools, a disciplined investing process, and personalized instructions to foster self-direction and life-long learning among investors.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ChineseInvestors.com

ORHub, Inc. (OTC: ORHB) is a cloud-based software platform designed to transform the business of surgery into a value-based model. The platform empowers care providers at every stage of the surgical process to collaborate, organize, deliver, measure, and reimburse in one intuitive, easy-to-use program. This significantly decreases cost and improves outcomes by eliminating inefficiencies, duplications of effort, and errors and omissions that result from siloed processes in outdated software and poor handoffs from one part of the care process to another.

The need for ORHub is clear. Health care costs are out of control at more than 17% of US GDP, which equates to over $3 trillion per year. With costs rising every year due to an aging population and increasingly expensive treatments, providers are under severe pressure to become more efficient and reduce costs. This is happening because payors are aggressively reducing reimbursements and finally moving away from fee-for-service and toward a performance-based reimbursement system referred to as value-based health care.

Accurately measuring the cost of treating a condition and relating that cost to the patient’s outcome is at the heart of value-based health care. Institutions that have adopted this model have reaped savings of 20-40% on their overall cost of care. Unfortunately, today’s siloed IT systems are fundamentally at odds with this process. Legacy health care solutions come from a fee-for-service world and have reinforced the problem and produced a system with erratic quality and unsustainable costs. Most health care applications today are incremental improvements on these existing systems or are simple digital implementations of antiquated pen-and-paper processes.

Providers wanting to practice value-based health care need value-based software. ORHub creates a value-based solution that will revolutionize surgical care delivery by tracking the cost of treating a condition from diagnosis to discharge, and tracking outcomes that resulted from that treatment.

In an industry where major IT rollouts traditionally cost millions of dollars and take an average of eighteen months, pilot installations of ORHub have been completed in less than a month. By avoiding integration with legacy systems completely through a radically comprehensive and collaborative approach, providers see results right away. This approach produces real-time metrics in a uniform manner at any institution, which makes it ideal for large providers looking to make improvements across the board at multiple facilities.

ORHub started as a pilot program developed in cooperation with a major Southern California hospital. It has since expanded operations into a second facility at the number two non-profit hospital system in the US. Three additional pilot programs are scheduled prior to a national launch. The company has raised more than $1.6 million as of January 2017.

The company is also a showcase member of the startup program at Microsoft, which has been a key partner by providing financial assistance, strategy, introductions to influencers and mentors, and access to its sales organization who see ORHub as an exciting partner to expand the utilization of Microsoft Surface devices and Azure Cloud. Microsoft is funding a major case study in partnership with Intel about the impact of ORHub on participating institutions to be concluded sometime in Q2 2017.

ORHub’s leadership team is helmed by Colt Melby, who was appointed CEO in 2016 and has been crucial to developing and executing the company’s business strategy. Mr. Melby’s extensive business experience includes the NASDAQ uplisting of Smith and Wesson (now American Outdoor Brands), CUI Global Inc., and Quest Resource Holdings Corp. His wealth of information and relationships have been vital in helping the company go from concept to production in institutional medicine in less than a year.

Delivering surgical care to a single patient is a complex process that may take half a dozen companies and more than a dozen departments cooperating inside and outside the care facility. ORHub simplifies and streamlines this process by enabling vendors, providers, and surgeons to collaborate on providing care.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ORHub.com

Despite a total of 28 states having now legalized marijuana in some form, the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration still classifies cannabis as a Schedule 1 substance, alongside heroin and LSD. With this mind, it has been hard for the banking industry to support legal marijuana businesses.

Because such businesses have fewer options in opening bank accounts with national banks, they are pressured to accept cash payments, making them vulnerable to all of the issues associated with operating a cash business. Cash transactions make cannabis businesses prime targets for theft and break-ins, not to mention the gap left open for certain business owners to commit tax fraud.

According to a new report published by Arcview Market Research, people in North America spent just under $7 billion on legal marijuana products in 2016, over 30% more than the previous year. The report continues to explain that the cannabis industry is one of the fastest growing in the world and that sales are expected to increase to over $21 billion by 2021.

In spite of the growth, many still believe there are too many potential problems that could be solved by opening new doors to banking services. A letter to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) (http://dtn.fm/1apB1) states, “The fledgling legal market for marijuana is around $7 billion, a figure that’s dwarfed by the overall $50 billion US market, most of which remains illegal. This business environment is an invitation to tax fraud, robberies, money laundering, and organized crime.”

However, there are companies such as SingleSeed Payments, a subsidiary of Singlepoint, Inc. (OTC: SING), that are filling the gap for this increasing demand. SingleSeed is a leading payment solution provider to the cannabis industry, offering non-cash payment solutions to its customers, making their businesses safer and more efficient while discouraging illegitimate transactions.

The company offers three main services: Cashless ATM, Pay by Text, and Text Message Marketing. Cashless ATM and Pay by Text allow customers to pay for their products without the need for physical money, while Text Message Marketing enables cannabis businesses to communicate with customers, increase loyalty, and drive sales through simple text messages.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Singlepoint.com

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Perhaps no segment of the travel industry has changed so much over the last few years as lodging and accommodation. Spurred by an initial decline of the global travel market a few years ago but given new life by a new generation of travelers who prefer a different kind of tourism with more personal experiences to the traditional hotel and sightseeing model, the alternative and private lodging segment has been growing at a steady rate recently. The private accommodation market is becoming increasingly popular and is expected to reach $36.6 billion in the United States alone by the end of next year, according to new data from travel industry research authority Phocuswright. This is great news for both tourists and providers of alternative lodging rental (ALR) services such as Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI), which offers these services via its innovative, real-time booking platform NextTrip.com.

In two separate reports released this month, Phocuswright emphasizes the fast growth of the vacation rental market, which has become one of the most popular segments of the industry. Private accommodation grew by 11 percent in 2016, which was nearly twice as fast as the overall U.S. travel market, according to the report ‘A Market Transformed: Private Accommodation in the U.S.’ (http://dtn.fm/AdOQ7). This growth pace is expected to slow down in 2017 and even 2018, but this segment is expected to continue outpacing the overall travel market throughout this time span, the document underlines.

The increasing role of private accommodation and alternative lodging rentals is also outlined by the sixteenth edition of Phocuswright’s ‘U.S. Online Travel Overview’ (http://dtn.fm/u4Wc8). According to this report, the alternative lodging rental market now accounts for almost one-fifth of the entire accommodation market. In addition, booking rates for vacation rentals are growing increasingly faster than those reported by hotels.

Once regarded simply as a cheaper alternative to traditional accommodation or a largely offline alternative typically reserved for family vacations, private accommodations have become increasingly popular since moving online with the help of intermediaries such as Airbnb and HomeAway. Gradually, they have become the accommodation of choice for a new generation of younger tourists whose traveling preferences focus mostly on creating memories and personal experiences by interacting with the places and people they visit more closely. The success of this private accommodation market has also attracted the interest of large travel and accommodation groups such as Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) and The Priceline Group’s (NASDAQ: PCLN) Booking.com, both of which have already started building their ALR inventories. In 2015, Expedia completed the acquisition of the HomeAway platform for $3.9 billion.

This trend is likely to continue in the future, with the private accommodation market set to continue gaining more ground over the traditional hotel and lodging segment, according to Phocuswright experts. “The segment’s shift online, the expansion of the concept to include private homes in urban markets, the entrance of OTAs, and numerous innovative startups have all contributed to powering a period of tremendous growth,” said Douglas Quinby, Phocuswright’s vice president, research. “Against a backdrop of strong performance for the U.S. travel industry, the private accommodation segment has grown much faster than travel overall,” he added.

With a continuously growing portfolio of alternative lodging units that currently stands at more than 1.1 million worldwide, the NextTrip.com platform is representative of Monaker Group’s focus on this market segment and its commitment to offering customers comprehensive travel solutions and personalized tours. The NextTrip.com platform is unique on the market at the moment, being the only one to offer travelers real-time booking and access to everything they need to organize their journeys down to the smallest details, from ALR options to hotels, rental car services, airlines, concierge and more. In addition to the NextTrip.com platform, Monaker Group offers a wide range of tourism services, including highly customizable tours and travel solutions, through its Maupintour subsidiary.

For more information, visit www.MonakerGroup.com

SeeThruEquity initiated coverage of Moxian, Inc. (NASDAQ: MOXC) on February 8, 2017, projecting that the China-based company will achieve annual revenues of more than $40 million by FY2019 alongside EBITDA of $17.456 million. The investment research firm set a price target of $4.50 for the company’s stock (http://nnw.fm/Kb4Rn).

Moxian is focused on the $48 billion (1H2017) O2O market, according to the SeeThruEquity report, quoting investment materials from the company. Moxian’s platform, Moxian+, targets small- and medium-sized businesses in the O2O market in China. Moxian offers consumers the ability, through mobile, social media, and online channels, to purchase online and pay offline. It is growing in popularity in China, especially among younger and higher educated demographic groups.

The commercial for-profit launch of Moxian+ is anticipated in March 2017, according to the SeeThruEquity report. It also says that Moxian plans to have 80 sales team members by the end of June 2017, largely split between the company’s offices in Shenzhen and Shanghai. By the end of 2017, the report states, the company plans to have 100 sales team members as it also expands into Guangzhou.

“The target of $4.50 implies a market capitalization of approximately $300 mn, which represents a multiple of 12x Moxian’s 2018 revenue outlook of $25 mn,” the report states. SeeThruEquity assumes revenue streams from mobile advertising, premium service licensing agreements and merchant fees from transactions.

SeeThruEquity projects that 2017 will be a pivotal growth year for Moxian as it expands its sales force, grows into more cities in China and launches Moxian+ with premium paid services and a mobile app. The research company said it was “intrigued” by the O2O market growth in China. It also found that Moxian’s strategy of focusing on small- and medium-sized businesses and social media through mobile apps and online is a way for the company to grow its customer base “with proper sales execution.”

The report noted that Moxian+ is currently non-paid, but it has already attracted 31,600 businesses and more than 300,000 consumers. The platform is expected to transition to a paid version this year. The company currently has two apps: Moxian+ Business for vendors and Moxian+ User for consumers. The business app enables firms to design ad campaigns for consumers who may have an interest in their products. The social app lets consumers connect with other individuals with similar interests.

For more information, visit www.Moxian.com

According to a just-published article by Royal Lepage (http://dtn.fm/Q6oZR), Canada’s leading real estate services provider, there has been a verified surge of American interest in Canadian real estate following the recent presidential election. The company reported an increase in searches into the Canadian real estate market from across the United States.

Although the United States has always been a top source for immigration into Canada, the past year has seen a significant increase in U.S. traffic on the Royal Lepage website. The site reported an increase of just under 74% compared to the same period in 2015. In addition, according to the company’s Canada-wide survey, nearly 40% of respondents expect a rise in American inquiries into the Canadian real estate market.

eXp World Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: EXPI) is especially well positioned for growth in the Canadian market. The fully agent owned real estate brokerage already has a significant presence in the country’s real estate sector thanks to its subsidiary, eXp Realty of Canada, Inc., which covers over 80 areas in Canada. Its unique ability to scale rapidly is based upon the fact that it is cloud-based, using advanced technologies for efficient communication, marketing, and training, and not dependent upon traditional brick-and-mortar facilities.

According to the findings, top researched locations in Canada by Americans include Ontario with over 41%, British Columbia with over 17%, Quebec with just under 14%, and Alberta with just under 8% of searches, with Calgary and Edmonton receiving the most interest from potential American buyers in the Alberta province.

Although Royal Lepage realtors working in these areas announced not having sold any properties to Americans since October 2016, they still represent a large percentage of property purchasers in Canada, and the dramatic increase in American interest in Canadian real estate since the election can’t be ignored.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.eXpWorldHoldings.com

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