Dakota Beacon

ALDEVRON is a fast-growing, Fargo-based biotechnology company, which may be ND’s most important privately-owned company.  Aldevron is being acquired for $9.6 billion by Danaher Corp., which is a company with $22 billion in revenue and a significant health care presence.  Aldevron is following the path of other successful ND companies that were acquired by much larger businesses in their industry.  Think Bobcat and Great Plains Software.  The acquisitions provide an investment exit for the owners and give their companies access to capital and broader markets.

LOUISE ERDRICH won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last week.  She grew up in Wahpeton where her German-American father and Chippewa mother were teachers at an American Indian boarding school.  Through her mother, she is a member of the Turtle Mt. Band of Chippewa and much of her writing relates to the experience of Indians in ND.  Erdrich (67) lives in the Twin Cities where she owns a bookstore focusing on Indian literature.  She won the Pulitzer for the novel, “The Night Watchmen,” based on her grandfather Patrick Gourneau, for many years the tribal chairman of the Turtle Mt. Band.  He resisted efforts of the federal government to terminate the Turtle Mt. Reservation. 

DON’T THROW CAUTION TO THE WIND  A Fargo Forum editorial took a surprising and somewhat questionable position regarding ND’s $8.7 billion Legacy Fund.  In short, the Forum thinks fund management is too conservative and the State Investment Board should be replaced by a board with a more risk-taking attitude.  The Forum stated that the portion of the fund’s assets that will be invested in ND are exempt from the “prudent investor rule.”  The exemption may have been necessary to give investment managers greater flexibility in selecting investments in a small state, but it’s doubtful it was ever intended to encourage a “swing for the fences” policy.  Even a carefully selected portfolio of ND companies will be risky by normal investment standards for public money.  It’s not necessary to form a new board to turbocharge the portfolio.  The Legacy Fund is ND’s largest financial asset and deserves cautious management.

OUTFOXED ITSELF  The ND Legislature may have trapped itself into a special session.  In April, the Legislature overrode Gov. Burgum’s veto to pass a law which limits the ability of the governor’s Emergency Commission to approve requests for federal funds in excess of $50 million in a two-year budget cycle.  That limit is already met in the 2019-2021 cycle and may be encountered early in 2021-2023 cycle.  The limit was set unrealistically low.  Emergency Commission requests may require a special or reconvened session of the Legislature later this year.

SIGNS OF LIFE  While ND taxable sales in this year’s first calendar quarter were down 10% from 2020, there were double digit increases in the largest cities.  Fargo was up 18%.  Oil Patch cities were uniformly down from 2020 — Williston had a 42% decrease.

HESS CORPORATION is one of the largest ND oil and gas producers and has built signifiant infrastructure in the state, such as gas plants and a rail terminal.  CEO John Hess told an investment conference their shale business has entered a new phase.  Henceforth, it will be a harvest business, less so a growth business.  Financial discipline and free cash flow are the bywords.  If $60 a barrel oil holds, Hess is looking forward to generating $1 billion a year in Bakken free cash flow.

NEW USE FOR CORN  Here are the parties:  Cargill (a Minnesota company, a giant in ag commodities), Helm (a Germany-based chemicals marketing company) and Genomatica (a San Diego-based company that developed a technology for converting corn into fabrics).  Cargill will license the Genomatica technology for use in a $300-million facility it is building in Iowa.  Helm, a joint venture partner in the Iowa plant, will manage marketing and sales of product (also known as BDO) expected to be in production in 2024.  The product will be a substitute for petroleum based plastics.  If the corn-based BDO is successful, it will significantly increase demand for corn.

FOOD INSECURITY IN THE BREAD BASKET  A Star Tribune article about national food insecurity used ND to illustrate the breadth of the problem.  The article said ND ranked at the top of the nation in the production of 11 food commodities, yet had a higher percentage of people in hunger than the nation as a whole.  The state has one food bank, the Great Plains Food Bank in Fargo, which has a distribution center in Bismarck.  Last year, Great Plains had a 39% increase in food distributed and a 42% surge in the number of people receiving meals.  The increases were largely attributable to the pandemic.  A United Way executive said access to food is the easy part of the food insecurity issue, the second part, generational poverty, is more complex.

LEN TWETEN (94) in 1954 took a small shop in Seattle’s Magnolia District and later expanded it to 18 retail locations in the Pacific Northwest and achieved a reputation as the best electronics retailer in the nation.  Magnolia Audio Visual was sold to Best Buy in 1988.  Len was born in Hamberg, ND, and grew up in Devils Lake.  Len died in May — his Wall Street Journal obituary said he was part Forest Gump and part Warren Buffet.

SO MANY NAMES  Neva Dancing Bull Meyers Satermo (87) died peacefully surrounded by her family on June 8, 2021, in Fargo.  Neva was the twelfth of 13 children born to Jackson and Josephine (Birdsbill) Dancing Bull. She is the last of the Jackson Dancing Bull Family. She was a member of the Dripping Dirt Clan and a Child of the Knife Clan. Her Indian names were Giddacksha Weeish “Falcon Woman” and Odigabagee Sageedz “Good Blossom”.  After attending Minot Business College and Haskell Indian College, Neva led a busy, contemporary life, for example, she used her “Magic Bus” to travel to NDSU championship football games in Frisco, Texas for seven years.

DAKTOIDS:  ND’s COVID vaccinations have stalled — only half of the adult population has had a first dose and rural Dickey County is the only county to reach 70% . . . New Mexico threatens to pass ND to become the No. 2 oil producing state . . . Augustana Univ. in Sioux Falls plans to launch a Div. 1 men’s hockey program with a donation from, guess who, billionaire T. Denny Sanford.