Tag: industrial news

Ford stock is now a ‘sell’ at UBS as an oversupply problem looms

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Shares of Ford Motor Co. were hit hard Monday by UBS analyst Patrick Hummel’s recommendation that investors sell, as the auto industry is facing a worrisome U-turn from undersupply to oversupply.

Hummel also cut his ratings on several other global auto makers, including General Motors Co.
GM,
-5.59%,
saying that as a recession concerns grow, “demand destruction is no longer a vague risk.”

In addition to all of the data suggesting the economy is slowing, Hummel said growing U.S. dealer inventories, weak used-car pricing, used-car dealer profit warnings and signs indicating deteriorating orders and shorter delivery times make him more cautious on the overall auto industry.

Don’t miss: CarMax stock suffered biggest selloff since the year 2000, as inflation, low consumer confidence lead to big profit miss.

“We think it will only take 3-6 months for the auto industry to end up in oversupply, which will put an abrupt end to a 3-year phase of unprecedented OEM [original equipment manufacturer] pricing power and margins,” Hummel wrote in a note to clients.

As part of his negative industry outlook, he cut his rating on Ford
F,
-7.38%
to sell from neutral and his stock price target to $10 from $13, with the new target implying about 11% downside from current levels.

Ford’s stock sank 7.6% in morning trading. It was trading up just 0.6% month to date, after plunging 26.5% in September to suffer its worst monthly performance since it plummeted 30.6% during pandemic-stricken March 2020.

Hummel noted that Ford has already warned about having more vehicles in inventory than expected, and above payments to suppliers running about $1 billion higher than projected, so he sees little margin left for negative surprises in terms of fourth-quarter deliveries and supply costs.

Hummel cut his 2023 adjusted earnings-per-share estimate by 61% to 52 cents a share, to reflect a $6.5 billion drop in price and sales mix. The compares with the current 2023 FactSet EPS consensus of $1.87.

“This sounds very negative, but Ford gains $19 billion in price alone since the beginning of 2020,” Hummel wrote.

Also read: Ford again raises price of F-150 Lightning electric pickup.

Read more: Ford September sales fall as drop in trucks offsets near tripling in EVs.

Meanwhile, GM’s stock dove 6.9% in morning trading toward a three-month low, and shares have shed 2.5% so far this month after tumbling 16% last month.

Hummel downgraded GM to neutral from buy, and dropped his price target by 32%, to $38 from $56.

The rating remains above Ford’s, because unlike its rival, Hummel noted that GM has had “no hiccups” in its third-quarter production schedule and therefore a “solid” quarterly report is expected. However, the downgrade reflects the fact that GM is “not immune” to a downturn in the industry.

Separately, Hummel also cut his stock-price target on Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
-0.16%
to $350 from $367, saying that following a third-quarter volume report that was below expectations, it will be “more challenging” for the electric-vehicle maker to meet its 2022 delivery growth target.

However, Hummel reiterated his buy rating on Tesla, as he believes the EV maker is best positioned to use pricing as the tool to fill its factories.

“Overall, the recession outlook should result in moderately lower margins for Tesla than previously expected, but we’re highly confident that by keeping the top line [revenue] momentum, Tesla will even widen the gap vs. competitors in terms of profitability,” Hummel wrote.

Ford’s stock has fallen 3% over the past three months, while GM shares have lost 3.1% and Tesla’s stock has dropped 11.8%. In comparison, the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-1.08%
has declined 7.5% the past three months.

Among other auto makers, he also downgraded both Renault SA
RNO,
+2.41%

RNLSY,
+1.17%
and Volkswagen AG
VOW,
-3.29%
to neutral from buy. He also downgraded auto parts makers Continental AG
CON,
+0.10%
and Faurecia SE
EO,
-3.77%

FURCF,
-3.67%
to neutral from buy.

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October 10, 2022
Rivian stock sinks toward 3-month low in wake of vehicle recall for safety issue

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Shares of Rivian Automotive Inc.
RIVN,
-7.64%
sank 8.8% toward a three-month low in premarket trading, in the wake of the electric vehicle maker’s large vehicle recall due to steering problems. The company said late Friday that it intends to recall about 13,000 vehicles, which The Wall Street Journal reported was to repair improperly installed fasteners that could cause drivers to lose steering control. The company said it was “committed to fixing this issue” as quickly as possible. The stock, which sank 7.6% on Friday prior to the report of the recall, has plunged 67.3% year to date while the S&P 500
SPX,
-2.80%
has shed 23.6%.

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October 10, 2022
Will the stock market be open on Columbus Day?

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It’s a regular day of business for the U.S. stock market on Monday, October 10, as equity exchanges stay open for Columbus Day, a federal holiday that also has been recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Bond markets, however, take the day off, which means a long weekend for the Treasury market, corporate bonds and other forms of tradable debt, starting after the close of business on Friday.

Stocks have endured a brutal selloff in the first nine months of the year as the Federal Reserve has worked to fight inflation that’s been stuck near it highest levels since the early 1980s.

See: Why stock-market bulls keep falling for Fed ‘pivot’ feints — and what it will take to put in a bottom

The central bank’s main tool to battle inflation has been to dramatically increase interest rates, while also shrinking its balance sheet, in an effort to tighten financial conditions and squelch demand for goods and services, while also bringing down stubbornly high costs of living, including food, shelter and energy prices.

The Fed’s focus in recent months also has been on cooling the roaring labor market, with strong wage gains in the past year viewed as one of several culprits behind elevated inflation.

Friday’s jobs report for September pegged the unemployment rate as matching a prepandemic low of 3.5%, dashing hopes for now of a significant trend toward a pullback in the labor market.

The S&P 500 index
SPX,
-2.80%
tumbled 2.8% on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-2.11%
fell 630.15 points, or 2.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
-3.04%
dropped 3.8%. An early October rally had offered some hope for a bounce for stocks, after a brutal first nine months for investors.

Bonds also have undergone a painful repricing this year as volatility tied to the Fed’s monetary tightening campaign has eroded the value of bonds issued in the past decade of low rates.

Read: Bond markets facing historic losses grow anxious about Fed that ‘isn’t blinking yet’

The S&P 500 is down about 24% for the year, while the Dow is off 19% and the Nasdaq nearly 32%.The 10-year Treasury rate
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.889%
was near 3.9% Friday, after recently touching 4%, it’s highest since 2010

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October 9, 2022
Rivian Recalling Nearly All of Its Vehicles

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Rivian Automotive is recalling nearly all of its vehicles to address a potential problem that could cause customers to lose steering control, the company said Friday.

The electric truck and SUV maker said the recall was made after it discovered a fastener connecting the upper control arm and steering knuckle may have been improperly installed. In rare cases, the problem could lead to a loss of steering control, the company said.

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October 7, 2022
Will the stock market be open on Columbus Day?

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It’s a regular day of business for the U.S. stock market on Monday, October 10, as equity exchanges stay open for Columbus Day, a federal holiday that also has been recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Bond markets, however, take the day off, which means a long weekend for the Treasury market, corporate bonds and other forms of tradable debt, starting after the close of business on Friday.

Stocks have endured a brutal selloff in the first nine months of the year as the Federal Reserve has worked to fight inflation that’s been stuck near it highest levels since the early 1980s.

The central bank’s main tool to battle inflation has been to dramatically increase interest rates, while also shrinking its balance sheet, in an effort to tighten financial conditions and squelch demand for goods and services, while also bringing down stubbornly high costs of living, including food, shelter and energy prices.

The Fed’s focus in recent months also has been on cooling the roaring labor market, with strong wage gains in the past year viewed as one of several culprits behind elevated inflation.

Friday’s jobs report for September pegged the unemployment rate as matching a prepandemic low of 3.5%, dashing hopes for now of a significant trend toward a pullback in the labor market.

The S&P 500 index
SPX,
-3.03%
tumbled 1.9% on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-2.39%
was down 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
-3.89%
was off 2.6%. And early October rally had offered some hope for a bounce for stocks, after a brutal first nine months for investors.

Bonds also have undergone a painful repricing this year as volatility tied to the Fed’s monetary tightening campaign has eroded the value of bonds issued in the past decade of low rates.

The S&P 500 is down about 23% for the year, the Dow off 19% and the Nasdaq off 31% since January. The 10-year Treasury rate
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.884%
was near 3.9% Friday, after recently touching 4%, it’s highest since 2010

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October 7, 2022
Large number of U.S. COVID deaths could be prevented if patients would take Pfizer’s Paxlovid, White House coordinator warns

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A large number of U.S. COVID deaths could be prevented if patients would take Paxlovid, the antiviral developed by Pfizer
PFE,
-1.79%
that helps reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, according to White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.

Jha told the New York Times that the average daily death count could be reduced to about 50 a day from 400 currently, if every American aged 50 and above that tests positive for the virus took a course of either Paxlovid or used monoclonal antibodies.

“The public doesn’t seem to understand that the evidence around hospitalization and deaths is really powerful,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco told the paper.

The issue seems to be a combination of worry about certain issues that Paxlovid can cause, including a strange metallic taste and the potential for “rebound COVID,” where patients quickly become reinfected after the five-day course of pills has been completed. That happened to both President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden recently.

The second reason is that many Americans — and Republicans, in particular — have refused to take COVID seriously and are not willing to take steps to reduce its impact. Trials have found Paxlovid to be effective across all age groups, but mostly among older patients. But as the COVID death rate for people under 50 is already close to zero, reducing it in a statistically significant way is difficult.

See now: CDC scraps travel health notices as countries slow testing, and study confirms Republican-leaning counties suffered more COVID deaths than Democrat-leaning ones

“I think almost everybody benefits from Paxlovid,” Jha said. “For some people, the benefit is tiny. For others, the benefit is massive.”

Yet a smaller share of 80-year-olds with COVID in the U.S. is taking it than 45-year-olds, Jha said citing data he has seen.

From the CDC: Stay Up to Date with COVID-19 Vaccines Including Boosters

The news comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data generally not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 41,605 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 25% from two weeks ago. Cases are declining in northeastern states including New York and New Jersey, while cases are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.

The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,021, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• Molnupiravir, the COVID pill developed by Merck
MRK,
+0.18%
and privately held Ridgeback Therapeutics, produced mixed results in two recent studies, the companies said Thursday. Early data from a trial conducted in the U.K. by the University of Oxford found no evidence of a difference when molnupiravir was added to usual care in reducing hospitalizations and death. A second study conducted in Israel found a benefit in patients who were 65 and older, but no benefit for 40- to 60-year-olds.

• Homelessness is surging in the U.S. again as pandemic programs that halted evictions are being phased out, the Associated Press reported. The overall number of homeless people in a federal report to be released in the coming months is expected to be higher than the 580,000 unhoused before the coronavirus outbreak, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said. The AP tallied results from city-by-city surveys conducted earlier this year and found the number of people without homes is up overall compared with 2020 in areas reporting results so far.

• The idea was to have China in stable and tip-top shape when thousands of delegates gather in Beijing to usher in a historic third term in power for Xi Jinping, BBC News reported. However, the coronavirus is not playing nicely. In recent weeks, tens of millions of people have again been confined to their homes in lockdowns across 60 towns and cities, and this is bringing political pressure on the man who has become the most powerful Chinese figure since the first communist-era leader, Mao Zedong.

Covid-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how China’s economic downturn could harm the U.S. and the rest of the world. Illustration: David Fang

• A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake, Reuters reported. The omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of omicron are being tracked by scientists, the World Health Organization said this week.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 620.5 million on Friday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,062,130 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 110.5 million have had a booster, equal to 48.9% of the vaccinated population, and 24.8 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 37.9% of those who received a first booster.

Some 11.5 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants.

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October 7, 2022
AMD stock drops as $1 billion shortfall blamed on even weaker-than-expected PC sales

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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares fell in the extended session Thursday after the chip maker cut its already conservative forecast because a drop in PC sales after two years of pandemic-driven sales appears worse than feared.

AMD
AMD,
-0.13%
shares fell as much as 4% after hours, following a 0.1% decline in the regular session to close at $67.85.

Late Thursday, the company forecast third-quarter revenue of about $5.6 billion with adjusted gross margin of 50%.

“The PC market weakened significantly in the quarter,” said Lisa Su, AMD’s chair and chief executive, in a statement. “While our product portfolio remains very strong, macroeconomic conditions drove lower-than-expected PC demand and a significant inventory correction across the PC supply chain.”

AMD expects a 40% drop in client sales to about $1 billion, compared with Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $2.04 billion.

In early August, AMD held firm on its revenue forecast of $26 billion to $26.6 billion for the year, and forecast third-quarter revenue of $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion, which at the time fell below the Wall Street consensus, and gross margins of 54%.

Analysts polled by FactSet currently forecast third-quarter revenue of $6.71 billion, and annual sales of $26.13 billion. AMD is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Nov. 1.

“The gross-margin shortfall to expectations was primarily due to lower revenue driven by lower client processor unit shipments and average selling price,” AMD said. “In addition, the third-quarter results are expected to include approximately $160 million of charges primarily for inventory, pricing and related reserves in the graphics and client businesses.”

Last week, after Micron Technology Inc.
MU,
-0.20%
reported an “unprecedented” oversupply problem, analysts debated whether this supply glut was worse than the one in 2019 that the industry has tried to avoid this time around, following two-years of COVID-19-related demand and supply-chain difficulties.

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October 6, 2022
U.S. risks prolonging pandemic if it doesn’t back WTO push to get vaccines and treatments to lower-income countries, lawmakers warn

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The U.S. is at risk of prolonging the COVID pandemic if it fails to back an initiative that aims to get vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to lower-income countries, a congressional group has told President Joe Biden.

In a letter to Biden from the group led by Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, the group urged him to back the World Trade Organization’s agreement in June to ease exports of lifesaving therapies.

“With more than 600 million shots in arms, 21,500 free testing sites, the ability to order at-home tests for free, and more treatments available now than at any point in the pandemic, the outlook in the United States is better than ever. Unfortunately, however, the prospect for many low-income countries is not so positive — putting the United States’ own success in jeopardy,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter was sent ahead of a meeting of the WTO council for trade-related aspects of IP rights that is due to kick off Thursday.

The group noted that lower-income countries are facing a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death as only a small percentage of their populations are vaccinated. Just 19% of people in those countries are vaccinated, compared with about 75% in high-income countries, according to the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce on COVID-19, a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the WTO.

U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 43,149 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 23% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon are rising.

The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,184, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.

The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• China’s huge Xinjiang region has been hit with sweeping COVID travel restrictions ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month, the Associated Press reported. Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75% of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports. The region is home to minorities who have been forced into prison-like re-education centers to force them to renounce their religion, typically Islam, and allegedly subjected to human-rights abuses.

• Five current or former Internal Revenue Service workers have been charged with fraud for illegally getting money from federal COVID-19 relief programs and using a total of $1 million for luxury items and personal trips, prosecutors said, the AP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday that the five have been charged with wire fraud after they filed fake applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which were part of a federal stimulus package tied to the pandemic response in 2020.

• Peloton Interactive Inc.
PTON,
+3.84%
said it plans to cut about 500 jobs, roughly 12% of its remaining workforce, in the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year as the connected fitness-equipment maker tries to reverse mounting losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. After enjoying a strong run early on in the pandemic, Peloton has struggled since the start of the U.S. recovery, and CEO Barry McCarthy, who took over in February, said he is giving the unprofitable company another six months or so to significantly turn itself around and, if it fails, Peloton likely isn’t viable as a stand-alone company.

Don’t miss: Peloton CEO says ‘naysayers’ are looking at the company’s $1.2 billion quarterly loss all wrong.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 619.9 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,061,490 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of one of the new bivalent boosters that target the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

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October 6, 2022
A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save 90,000 U.S. lives and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, study finds

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A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save about 90,000 people living in the U.S. from dying of the virus and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund.

As immunity wanes and new variants that can evade protection from early vaccines emerge, surges in hospitalizations and deaths are increasingly likely this fall and winter, the authors wrote. That makes it important that people get the bivalent boosters recently authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and help stop transmission, they wrote.

Researchers analyzed three scenarios to evaluate the impact of vaccination on reducing fatalities, hospitalizations and medical costs to both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The first measured the outcome if daily vaccination rates remain unchanged from current levels; they have gradually declined since the first wave of the omicron variant. Federal financial support has also not been replenished, amid a perception among many Americans that the pandemic is over and as congressional Republicans oppose legislative efforts to continue the pandemic fight.

As of Oct. 3, some 68% of the U.S. population has had primary shots, but fewer than half of those have received a booster dose, and only 36% of those aged 50 and older have had a second booster.

The second and third Commonwealth Fund scenarios looked at outcomes if rates increased by the end of 2022.

In one scenario, researchers imagined booster uptake would track flu-shot coverage in 2020 to 2021. The other scenario assumed 80% of eligible individuals 5 and older get a booster by the end of 2022.

Source: Commonwealth Fund

The data found that more than 75,000 deaths could be prevented along with more than 745,000 hospitalizations if coverage reaches similar levels to 2021 to 2022 flu vaccination. The best scenario would save $56 billion in direct medical costs over the course of the next six months.

“Stratifying by insurance type, we found direct medical costs would be reduced by $11 billion for Medicare alone under scenario 1 and $13 billion under scenario 2,” the authors wrote. “An additional $3.5 to $4.5 billion in savings would accrue to Medicaid. Even if the federal government paid all vaccination costs, accelerated campaigns would generate more than $10 billion in net savings from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”

The study comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 44,484 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 22% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.

The daily average for hospitalizations was down 12% at 27,334, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 393.

The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• Long COVID, a condition that can encompass symptoms such as respiratory distress, cough, “brain fog,” fatigue and malaise that last 12 weeks or longer after initial infection, is becoming a long-term challenge as both employers and workers navigate an ever-mutating virus, according to Liz Seegert, writing for NextAvenue.org. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in five COVID survivors younger than 65 experienced at least one incident that might be related to previous COVID-19 infection. Among those 65 and older, the rate was one in four. Their data also show that nearly three times as many people age 50 to 59 currently have long COVID than those 80 or older.

• A retired judge opened a public inquiry on Tuesday into how Britain handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying bereaved families and those who suffered would be at the heart of the proceedings, the Associated Press reported. Former Court of Appeal judge Heather Hallett said the inquiry would investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded, and whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.”

With each mutation, the Covid-19 virus is becoming more transmissible. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down the science of how Covid variants are getting better at infecting and spreading. Illustration: Rami Abukalam

• Health experts are keeping an eye on new versions of the BA.5 omicron subvariant amid concerns those virus versions can evade the drugs developed to fight COVID, Salon reported. Of particular concern are two named BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, along with BA.2.75.2, which is spreading in Singapore, India and parts of Europe. Then there’s XBB, which some research suggest is the most antibody-evasive strain tested so far. The World Health Organization said in its weekly update on the virus that BA.5 descendent lineages continued to be dominant in the latest week, accounting for 80.8% of sequences shared through a global database. It also noted “increased diversity” within omicron and its lineages.

• Eiger BioPharmaecuticals Inc.
EIGR,
-5.01%
said Wednesday it will not pursue emergency authorization of its experimental treatment for mild and moderate COVID-19 infections. It had asked the Food and Drug Administration to consider an EUA application based on data from the Together trial, a Phase 3 study that has assessed 11 possible treatments for COVID-19 that is being conducted in Brazil and Canada. Eiger said the FDA instead recommended the company consider running its own pivotal trial for peginterferon lambda that would support full approval of the drug.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 619.2 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 96.5 million cases and 1,060,446 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

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October 5, 2022
Midterm elections: Republicans regain edge over Democrats in generic ballot, scoring biggest advantage in 2 months in key indicator

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The Republican Party has an edge again in the generic ballot, and that advantage has reached a level last seen in late July, according to a RealClearPolitics average for that closely watched indicator.

That could be another sign that the GOP may be getting back some momentum as November’s midterm elections approach, after Democratic prospects improved during the summer.

Republicans are now scoring 46.0% support in the RCP average of generic ballots, a percentage point ahead of Democrats at 45.0%.

The GOP hit a 1-point edge last Wednesday, then saw a dip, but as of Tuesday was back at that level, as shown in the chart below.

It’s not a big advantage, but it’s the best showing for Republicans in RCP’s data for generic ballots since July 28, as Democrats had the advantage for much of August and September.

Related: If this seat flips red, Republicans will have ‘probably won a relatively comfortable House majority’

Also read: ‘Republican control of the House is not a foregone conclusion,’ says political analyst

RealClearPolitics

The generic ballot refers to a poll question that asks voters which party they would support in a congressional election without naming individual candidates. Analysts tend to see it as a useful indicator.

Other websites focused on political analysis and forecasting, such as FiveThirtyEight, still show Democrats with an edge in their data for generic ballots.

Election Day for the midterm contests is now five weeks away. Democrats have focused their campaigns on abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, while Republicans have seized on Americans’ frustration with high inflation.

The additional chart below is interactive and shows RCP’s data for the generic ballot over a longer time frame.

Related: Biden to talk up Democrats’ support for abortion rights, with midterm elections now just 5 weeks away

And see: New poll finds just 30% of Americans approve of how Biden is handling inflation

Plus: Republicans’ chances for taking control of Senate rebound to 46%, a level last seen about 8 weeks ago

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October 5, 2022
Elon Musk would lose 13.5 million Twitter followers if he scraps most spam accounts; Justin Bieber would lose 27.6 million, data finds

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Elon Musk would lose about 13.5 million Twitter followers, if he pushes through his plan to get rid of most spam accounts, according to data crunched by CodeClan, a Scottish digital skills academy.

The Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
-3.84%
CEO on Tuesday gave up a legal battle and agreed to pay $44 billion to take over the social-media company. Musk has said he wants less than 5% of Twitter
TWTR,
-2.35%
accounts to be spam.

But Musk’s losses pale in comparison with singer Justin Bieber, who would lose 27.6 million of his 114.2 million followers, according to the data.

Britney Spears would lose the highest percentage of fake followers out of the top 20 with some 48% of her 55.8 million followers being classified as fakes.

See also: Elon Musk says Twitter will eventually be part of ‘X, the everything app’

Former President Barack Obama would lose 19.3 million of his 131.9 million followers, the data shows.

Among other high profile names; Katy Perry has about 23.3 million fakes among her 108.9 million followers, or 21.4% of the total; Rihanna has about 26.5 million fakes, or 24.9% of her 106.5 million followers; Lady Gaga has 10.9 million fakes in her roster of 84.7 million followers, for 12.9% of the total; Kim Kardashian has about 14 million fakes, or 19.4% of her 72.4 million followers, and Ellen DeGeneres has about 24.4 million fakes, equal to 31.5% of her 77.5 million followers.

See now: Elon Musk’s legal battle with Twitter may be over, but his war with the SEC continues

In the world of politics, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has about 17.5 million fakes in his 78.8 million followers, equal to 22.2% of the total.

CNN Breaking News has about 7.7 million fakes, or 12.2% of its 63.1 million followers. Bill Gates has about 14.3 million fakes, or 24.2% of his 58.9 million followers. And NASA has some 14.7 million fakes, or 26.8% of its 57.1 million followers.

Twitter shares were slightly lower premarket, while Tesla was down 1.1%.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp.
DWAC,
+0.03%,
the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, buying the company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social social-media company, was slightly higher premarket after falling more than 5% Tuesday in the wake of the Musk/Twitter news.

The SPAC has fallen 67% in the year to date, while the S&P 500
SPX,
-1.28%
has fallen 20%.

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October 5, 2022
U.S. stocks finish choppy session with losses, snap 2-day winning streak as investors assess positive economic data
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U.S. stock indexes ended modestly lower on Wednesday, despite briefly turning positive in the final hour of trading, while data showed steady growth in private-sector jobs and in the service sector, indicating more scope for the Federal Reserve to continue to raise interest rates.

How stocks traded?
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average
  DJIA,
  +0.03%
  lost 42.45 points, or 0.1%, to finish at 30,273.87
- The S&P 500
  SPX,
  +0.21%
  was off 7.65 points, or 0.2%, ending at 3,783.28
- The Nasdaq Composite
  COMP,
  +18.82%
  shed 27.77 points, or 0.2%, to end at 11,148.64
On Tuesday, the Dow jumped 825 points, or 2.8%, while the S&P 500 increased 3.1% and the Nasdaq Composite rallied 3.3%.
What drove markets?

Wall Street stocks finished in the red after three main indexes bounced back from earlier losses in the final hour of trade, following a strong September private employment report in the morning.

Data released Wednesday showed that private-sector payrolls rose by 208,000 in September, indicating steady growth and supporting the view that the Fed has enough scope to keep raising interest rates. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a rise of 200,000.

The report came two days before the closely watched nonfarm payrolls data issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Investors are eying on it for important guidance on the Fed’s policy stance in the November meeting.

Friday’s employment report is expected to show the economy added 275,000 jobs in September, compared with 315,000 new positions added in August, according to a survey polled by Dow Jones.

See: Hiring and job creation seen falling to a 1 1/2-year low in U.S. September jobs report

“That certainly could move the needle,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. “Again, it doesn’t mean that it actually is going to change the market, but it could be the catalyst for short term rally if we get a disappointing jobs report.”

“But keep in mind, that’s just the anticipation of a Fed pivot based on data. But that does not ensure a Fed pivot. And so it could be one of those short-term rallies like the one we saw earlier this week,” Hooper said.

In other data Wednesday, an ISM barometer of U.S. business conditions in the service sector dipped to 56.7% in September but still showed steady growth and rising employment in a sign the economy is still expanding.

The U.S. trade deficit in August fell to $67.4 billion, the lowest level since mid 2021, paving the way for a resumption of growth in gross domestic product in the third quarter.

See: Why investors shouldn’t expect a break from the stock-market whiplash, says this strategist

The S&P 500 had just enjoyed its largest two day percentage gain since April 2020 on Monday and Tuesday, and the best start to a quarter since 1938, according to Dow Jones Market data.

The bounce followed three quarters of declines, the worst such run since 2008, during which time the S&P 500 fell 24.8% to a near two-year trough as investors worried that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes to crush inflation would harm the economy.

Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, believes the volatility in the stocks will continue because markets are getting a very “consistent message” from the Fed.

“Given what has happened over the last five trading sessions alone, we would be basically telling our clients to tighten your seatbelt a little bit because it’s definitely going to continue to be a bumpy ride,” Mulberry told MarketWatch in a phone interview on Wednesday. “If we get a ‘Goldilocks’ (jobs) report, that would mean decent economic activity is going on. That’s good for earnings overall in the market, but it’s not growing to a point where interest rates would have to be ratcheted up another 125 basis points by the end of the year.”

See: The stock market is surging as the U.S. dollar retreats. It’s all about bonds.

One major reason behind the rise early this week was the view that the Fed would pivot away from its aggressive monetary tightening.

Johanna Chua, chief Asia economist at Citi, said that though U.S economic growth remained in better shape than other countries and Fed officials continued to sound hawkish, the market risked being wrongfooted by any signs that interest rates could soon peak.

“Even as the overall fundamental setup has not changed… trimming of bearish risk/bearish rates/bullish USD positions has driven a sharp reversal,” Chua said.

Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said Wednesday that the Federal Reserve needs to keep raising its benchmark interest rate in order to cool inflation that hit a 40-year high earlier this year and has shown little signs of cooling. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic will speak at 4 p.m. Eastern.

Meanwhile, the OPEC+ group said Wednesday that it will reduce its collective crude production levels by 2 million barrels a day starting next month, the biggest cut since the start of the pandemic. Oil futures headed higher with West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery
CL00,

CLX22,

rose $1.24, or 1.4%, to settle at $87.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The S&P 500’s energy sector
SP500.10,
-0.07%
rose 2.1% following the news, up 12.6% over the last three trading days. According to Dow Jones Market Data, it was the best three-day percentage gain since November 2020 when it gained 16.1%. Shares of Schlumberger
SLB,
+0.77%
gained 6.3% at the close, while Exxon Mobil
XOM,
+1.32%
shares advanced 4%.

Companies in focus

Shares of Helen of Troy Ltd.
HELE,
-2.75%
finished 3.4% higher Wednesday, after the consumer products company, with brands including OXO, Hydro Flask and Braun, reported fiscal second-quarter earnings that beat expectations but cut its full-year outlook, as rising inflation has prompted consumers to change their spending patterns.

Shares of Monopar Therapeutics Inc.
MNPR,
+6.36%
gained 1.8% after the company said it completed enrollment in a Phase 2b clinical trial evaluating its experimental therapy aimed at preventing severe oral mucositis in patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy for oropharyngeal cancer.

Shares of Eiger BioPharmaceuticals Inc.
EIGR,
+0.85%
tumbled 5% after the company said it will not pursue emergency authorization of its experimental treatment for mild and moderate COVID-19 infections.

Shares of Lamb Weston Holdings Inc.
LW,
+2.45%
ended 4.2% higher Wednesday, after the potato supplier reported fiscal first-quarter profit that beat expectations, higher prices helped offset a volume decline.

—Jamie Chisholm contributed reporting
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October 5, 2022
Elon Musk wants to move forward with his purchase of Twitter. Here’s how some Twitter users reacted.

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Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter
TWTR,
+22.24%
indicating he intends to move forward with his original proposal that he acquire the company for $54.20 a share, according to a filing from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+2.90%
CEO agreed to buy the social media company back in April for $44 billion, but in recent months said he wanted to terminate the deal, publicly citing concerns about bots on the platform. The two sides had been entrenched in a legal battle over the past few months, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge was scheduled to hear arguments on the case in October, a case Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said Musk was “highly unlikely” to win.

See also: College students who got low grades complained about their ‘dismissive’ professor. Then NYU fired him.

Twitter users reacted to the news on Tuesday afternoon, many of them joking about a potential resolution to the seemingly never-ending Elon Musk Twitter saga.

One Twitter user said she believes Musk will look to reinstate the account of former President Donald Trump, which was banned shortly after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has claimed he won’t return to Twitter even if the Musk deal is executed, and he’ll continue to post on his platform, Truth Social.

See also: Trump’s Facebook ban may end as soon as January 2023, Meta executive says

“We’re doing a big platform right now, so I probably wouldn’t have any interest,” the former president said.

Another user tweeted that supporters of the meme crypto dogecoin
DOGEUSD,
+1.11%
are excited by Musk’s move to proceed with the deal. Musk has touted dogecoin on several occasions in the past few years.

Similar to bitcoin, dogecoin is a peer-to-peer, open-source cryptocurrency. It trades under the ticker symbol “DOGE” and features the face of the shiba inu from the popular Doge meme as its logo. Dogecoin was up as much as 9.16% after the Bloomberg news was published.

Musk has not publicly commented on the report, but one Twitter user pointed out that he tweeted about his satellite internet project Starlink after the news broke, but did not mention Twitter in any way.

A report from The Wall Street Journal stated Musk’s legal team relayed the proposal to Twitter’s team “overnight Monday.”

Shares of Tesla Inc. dipped after the news, and are now up just 1.31% during Tuesday’s trading. Shares of the EV maker were up as much as 5.65% on the day before the Musk news.

See also: SPAC backing Trump’s Truth Social hit by news Musk is again offering to acquire Twitter at original price

The news comes a few days after hundreds of text messages from Musk’s phone were made public as evidence in Twitter’s lawsuit.

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October 4, 2022

21 dividend stocks yielding 5% or more of companies that will produce plenty of cash in 2023

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When the stock market has jumped two days in a row, as it has now, it is easy to become complacent.

But the Federal Reserve isn’t finished raising interest rates, and recession talk abounds. Stock investors aren’t out of the woods yet. That can make dividend stocks attractive if the yields are high and the companies produce more cash flow than they need to cover the payouts.

Below is a list of 21 stocks drawn from the S&P Composite 1500 Index
SP1500,
+3.12%
that appear to fit the bill. The S&P Composite 1500 is made up of the S&P 500
SPX,
+3.06%,
the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index
MID,
+3.18%
and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index
SML,
+3.80%.

The purpose of the list is to provide a starting point for further research. These stocks may be appropriate for you if you are looking for income, but you should do your own assessment to form your own opinion about a company’s ability to remain competitive over the next decade.

Cash flow is key

One way to measure a company’s ability to pay dividends is to look at its free cash flow yield. Free cash flow is remaining cash flow after planned capital expenditures. This money can be used to pay for dividends, buy back shares (which can raise earnings and cash flow per share), or fund acquisitions, organic expansion or for other corporate purposes.

If we divide a company’s estimated annual free cash flow per share by its current share price, we have its estimated free cash flow yield. If we compare the free cash flow yield to the current dividend yield, we may see “headroom” for cash to be deployed in ways that can benefit shareholders.

For this screen, we began with the S&P Composite 1500, then narrowed the list as follows:

Dividend yield of at least 5.00%.
Consensus free cash flow estimate available for calendar 2023, among at least five analysts polled by FactSet. We used calendar-year estimates, even though fiscal years for many companies don’t match the calendar.
Estimated 2023 free cash flow yield of at least double the current dividend yield.

For real-estate investment trusts, dividend-paying ability is measured by funds from operations (FFO), a non-GAAP figure that adds depreciation and amortization back to earnings. Adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) takes this a step further, subtracting cash expected to be used to maintain properties. So for the two REITs on the list, the FCF yield column makes use of AFFO.

For many companies in the financial sector, especially banks and insurers, free cash flow figures aren’t available, so the screen made use of earnings-per-share estimates. These are generally considered to run close to actual cash flow for these heavily regulated industries.

Here are the 21 companies that passed the screen, with dividend yields of at least 5% and estimated 2023 FCF yields at least twice the current payout. They are sorted by dividend yield:

Company	Ticker	Type	Dividend yield	Estimated 2023 FCF yield	Estimated “headroom”
Uniti Group Inc.	UNIT, +7.36%	Real-Estate Investment Trusts	8.33%	25.25%	16.92%
Hanesbrands Inc.	HBI, +5.56%	Apparel/ Footwear	8.33%	17.29%	8.96%
Kohl’s Corp.	KSS, +5.80%	Department Stores	7.68%	16.72%	9.04%
Rent-A-Center Inc.	RCII, +10.40%	Finance/ Rental/ Leasing	7.52%	17.26%	9.73%
Macerich Co.	MAC, +8.18%	Real-Estate Investment Trusts	7.43%	18.04%	10.60%
Devon Energy Corp.	DVN, +5.72%	Oil & Gas Production	7.13%	14.47%	7.33%
AT&T Inc.	T, +1.19%	Major Telecommunications	6.98%	14.82%	7.84%
Newell Brands Inc.	NWL, +5.16%	Industrial Conglomerates	6.59%	17.42%	10.82%
Dow Inc.	DOW, +2.96%	Chemicals	6.18%	15.63%	9.45%
LyondellBasell Industries NV	LYB, +3.64%	Chemicals	6.09%	16.07%	9.99%
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. Class A	SMG, +5.01%	Chemicals	6.04%	12.68%	6.65%
Diamondback Energy Inc.	FANG, +5.23%	Oil & Gas Production	5.56%	13.63%	8.08%
Best Buy Co. Inc.	BBY, +5.86%	Electronics/ Appliance Stores	5.53%	14.08%	8.55%
Viatris Inc.	VTRS, +5.62%	Pharmaceuticals	5.50%	28.95%	23.45%
Prudential Financial Inc.	PRU, +5.66%	Life/ Health Insurance	5.38%	13.30%	7.91%
Ford Motor Co.	F, +7.76%	Motor Vehicles	5.23%	15.95%	10.72%
Invesco Ltd.	IVZ, +6.76%	Investment Managers	5.23%	14.95%	9.73%
Franklin Resources Inc.	BEN, +4.37%	Investment Managers	5.17%	13.21%	8.04%
Kontoor Brands Inc.	KTB, +0.73%	Apparel/ Footwear	5.17%	14.15%	8.98%
Seagate Technology Holdings PLC	STX, +4.09%	Computer Peripherals	5.11%	13.19%	8.07%
Foot Locker Inc.	FL, +1.35%	Apparel/ Footwear Retail	5.03%	15.52%	10.49%
Source: FactSet

Any stock screen has its limitations. If you are interested in stocks listed here, it is best to do your own research, and it is easy to get started by clicking the tickers in the table for more information about each company. Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.

For the “estimated FCF yields,” consensus free cash flow estimates for calendar 2023 were used for all companies except the following:

For the REITs, (Uniti Group Inc.
UNIT,
+7.36%
and Macerich Co.
MAC,
+8.18%
), consensus AFFO estimates were used.
Consensus EPS estimates were used for Prudential Financial Inc.
PRU,
+5.66%,
Invesco Ltd.
IVZ,
+6.76%
and Franklin Resources Inc.
BEN,
+4.37%.

Don’t miss: Dividend yields on preferred stocks have soared. This is how to pick the best ones for your portfolio.

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October 4, 2022

Twitter stock surges 22% after Elon Musk gives up bot battle and commits to $44 billion deal

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Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk now plans to close his proposed $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc., according to a Tuesday filing that arrived less than two weeks before a judge was scheduled to hear a case on the disputed acquisition.

Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter’s management team indicating that he was proposing to move forward with the original acquisition terms late Monday, and that letter was released as a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday afternoon. A Twitter spokesperson later confirmed to MarketWatch that the company intended to proceed with the deal for $54.20 a share.

Twitter
TWTR,
+22.24%
shares jumped 22.2% to $52 in Tuesday’s session, after an hours-long trading halt that started after Bloomberg News first reported the move around noon Eastern time, suggesting a possible end to the legal saga between the two parties. The increase is the second best daily percentage gain on record for Twitter stock, behind only the 27.1% gain experienced when Musk disclosed his initial ownership stake in Twitter in April. Twitter was the best performing stock Tuesday in the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+3.06%,
and is now up 20.3% on the year.

The two sides have been locked in a legal battle for months, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge was expected to hear from both sides in a five-day trial slated to begin Oct. 17. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the Delaware judge asked the two sides to come up with a plan by the end of the day that could bring about an end to the litigation.

“Musk could see the writing on the wall that he was going to lose the trial,” said Josh White, an assistant finance professor at Vanderbilt University, in an email to MarketWatch. “By doing this, he can save legal costs, time and ultimately losing in a very public trial.”

See also: Here’s how Twitter’s users reacted to Musk agreeing to buy the platform

Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter in a deal that valued the company at roughly $44 billion, but he later said that he was terminating the deal. The Tesla
TSLA,
+2.90%
CEO cited concerns about bot activity on Twitter and said he believed the company’s management team wasn’t accurate in its public disclosures about the extent of spam activity on the platform.

White noted that text messages released in conjunction with the case showed that Musk was aware of Twitter’s bot issue before going forward with his original deal offer, and he doubted that Musk would be able to show that “something really changed” after that point.

“If he offered less than $54.20, Twitter might have proceeded with the trial, and he would be deposed,” White continued. “By offering the original price, he maximizes the chance that Twitter accepts and the trial ends. I expect Twitter’s board to accept the deal and for it to close rather quickly.”

Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives agreed that the Tesla leader’s latest move marked a “clear sign that Musk recognized heading into Delaware Court that the chances of winning vs. Twitter board was highly unlikely and this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Being forced to do the deal after a long and ugly court battle in Delaware was not an ideal scenario and instead accepting this path and moving forward with the deal will save a massive legal headache.”

Opinion: Twitter stood up to Elon Musk and won, but will it feel like a win once he owns it?

Vanderbilt’s White noted that a deal at the original price would be a “big” win for Twitter shareholders.

“The stock price of Snap
SNAP,
+8.42%
and Twitter seemed to trade around the same price level before the offer,” he told MarketWatch. “Snap is now a ~$10 stock with a $17 billion market cap. So Twitter’s shareholders win by getting $54.20 rather than having the price drop to $10-20 per share.”

Additionally, he deemed Delaware business law another winner: “This deal shows that even the richest man in the world cannot overcome well-written contracts enforced in a neutral and fair way by the Delaware courts.”

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October 4, 2022
CDC scraps travel health notices as countries slow testing, and study confirms Republican-leaning counties suffered more COVID deaths than Democrat-leaning ones

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its country-by-country COVID-19 travel health notices that it began issuing early in the pandemic, the Associated Press reported.

The reason: Fewer countries are testing for the virus or reporting the number of COVID cases. That limits the CDC’s ability to calculate travelers’ risk, according to the agency.

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency will only post a travel health notice for an individual country if a situation such as a troubling new variant of the virus changes CDC travel recommendations for that country.

The CDC still recommends that travelers remain up-to-date on vaccines and follow recommendations found on its international travel page.

From the CDC: Stay Up to Date with COVID-19 Vaccines Including Boosters

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed that political affiliations played a key role as a risk factor for dying of COVID, finding evidence that Republican-leaning counties suffered higher death rates than Democratic-leaning ones.

“We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered
Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states,” the authors, Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of the Yale School of Management wrote.

“Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats.”

The researchers used data from Ohio and Florida and matched 2017 voter registration data with mortality data from 2018 to 2021. They also found a link between political affiliation and views on vaccines, with Republican-leaning counties showing far lower vaccination rates.

Source: NBER paper

In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 45,495 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 24% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 11 states plus Washington, D.C. They are up by double-digit percentages in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.

The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,854, while the daily average for deaths is down 12% to 386.

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.
NCLH,
+16.84%
is removing all COVID testing, vaccination and masking requirements from its health and safety protocols. The company said the new protocols, which follows “significant, positive progress” in the public health environment, will be effective Oct. 4. “Health and safety are always our first priority; in fact, we were the health and safety leaders from the very start of the pandemic,” said Chief Executive Harry Sommer. “Many travelers have been patiently waiting to take their long-awaited vacation at sea and we cannot wait to celebrate their return.”

See also: Would you take a cruise without such COVID-19 testing, vaccination and masks? MarketWatch asked health experts to weigh in.

• Ringo Starr has test positive for COVID, forcing the former Beatle to cancel scheduled concerts in Canada with his All Starr Band, the AP reported. Five concert dates from Tuesday to Sunday — in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Lethbridge, Alberta; and the British Columbia cities of Abbotsford and Penticton — will be rescheduled. “Ringo hopes to resume as soon as possible and is recovering at home. As always, he and the All Starrs send peace and love to their fans and hope to see them back out on the road soon,” said a statement from the band.

The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

• A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday became the latest to hear arguments on whether President Joe Biden overstepped his authority with an order that federal contractors require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID, the AP reported separately. The contractor mandate has a complicated legal history. It is being challenged in more than a dozen federal court districts, and the mandate has been blocked or partially blocked in 25 states.

• The Chinese resort city of Sanya has ordered all tourists to take PCR tests, and those who fail to do so by noon on Tuesday will be slapped with a yellow code restricting their mobility, according to local officials, the South China Morning Post reported. The city in the southern province of Hainan logged two asymptomatic Covid-19 cases on Monday. It carried out a round of mass testing and locked down several areas in Haitang district, including a scenic island that received around 2,000 tourists on Monday.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 618.7 million on Tuesday, while the death toll rose above 6.54 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 96.4 million cases and 1,059,888 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

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October 4, 2022
Buffett’s Likely Successor Buys $68 Million of Berkshire Stock

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Berkshire Hathaway

Vice Chairman Greg Abel, the likely successor to CEO Warren Buffett, bought about $68 million of the company’s shares last Thursday in what appears to be his first purchases of Berkshire stock since he assumed the position in 2018.

In several Form 4 filings Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Abel disclosed that he purchased 168 Berkshire Hathaway (ticker: BRK/A, BRK/B) Class A shares through the Gregory Abel Revocable Trust on behalf of his wife, children, and other family members.

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October 3, 2022
Poshmark to be bought by South Korean internet company Naver in $1.2 billion deal

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Online secondhand-fashion marketplace Poshmark Inc. has agreed to be bought by South Korean internet company Naver in a $1.2 billion deal, the companies announced Monday, a move that executives said would help both brands expand internationally.

Shares of Poshmark
POSH,
-0.64%
jumped 11.8% in after-hours trading on the news.

Under the terms of the deal, Naver
035420,
-8.79%
will acquire Poshmark’s outstanding shares for $17.90 in cash, representing a 15% upside to Poshmark’s Monday closing price of $15.57. The transaction is set to close by the first quarter of next year, pending Poshmark shareholders’ approval.

Poshmark went public in late 2020, pricing shares at $42 a share, and ended its first day of trading at more than $100 a share, but has never approached those heights again. It last traded for more than the acquisition price Naver has agreed to pay late last year.

For more: Five things to know about Poshmark

In a statement, executives from both companies talked up the potential to combine Naver’s array of search, e-commerce, AI and social-media technology with Poshmark’s social and shopping platforms. Poshmark, the companies said, would also embark on a bigger international expansion strategy, including into other markets in Asia, in the “medium-term.”

They also talked about the potential for the combined company to save around $30 million annually within two years after the deal’s closing through “rationalization of public company costs” and higher operating leverage, along with the potential for more than 20% yearly sales growth by harnessing Naver’s advertising resources.

Naver, which runs large search and e-commerce platforms, said the move would broaden its e-commerce platform, bring younger users into the company’s fold and allow it to “capitalize on the global online fashion re-commerce and sustainable economy opportunity.”

“Naver’s leading technology in search, AI recommendation and e-commerce tools will help power the next phase of Poshmark’s global growth,” Choi Soo-Yeon, Naver’s chief executive, said in a statement, which also said that Naver hosted a large number of digital content creators in Korea.

Naver owns companies like Wattpad, a social-media platform, and runs Webtoon, a site for digital comics, along with a metaverse platform called Zepeto, and also has joint ownership of an internet service group in Japan. Naver said its online community in Korea consists of more than 36 million monthly users, who use its search engine and other services.

Poshmark Chief Executive Manish Chandra said the deal would also give Poshmark opportunities to grow.

“Longer term, as part of Naver, we will benefit from their financial resources, significant technology capabilities, and leading presence across Asia to expand our platform, elevate our product and user experiences, and enter new and large markets,” he said in the statement.

Naver said the acquisition would also help give it a bigger foothold in the U.S. And it said the deal would allow it to broaden the appeal of so-called live-stream shopping.

“Live-stream shopping is a key driver of e-commerce in China and Korea (and increasingly in the U.S.) today, allowing shoppers to buy products in real-time through live video broadcasts, enabling greater insights and more clarity around purchasing decisions,” the statement said.

Once the deal closes, Poshmark will be a standalone subsidiary of Naver, with the same management team, brand and headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., the companies revealed.

At the close of Monday’s trading, shares of Poshmark were down around 9% year-to-date. The S&P 500 index
SPX,
+2.59%,
by comparison, has slid 23% over that time.

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October 3, 2022
Tesla’s Deliveries Missed the Mark. Why Analysts Aren’t Worried.

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Tesla

stock dropped on Monday after the electric-vehicle company disclosed delivery figures that fell short of Wall Street forecasts, but at least some analysts see reason for optimism.

On Sunday,

Tesla

(ticker: TSLA) reported that it delivered 343,830 cars and produced 365,923 in the third quarter. The deliveries were a jump compared with the 254,695 vehicles

Tesla

handed over to customers in the second quarter, but still below Wall Street estimates. The company said that deliveries have historically been skewed toward the end of each quarter, and that as “production volumes continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks.”

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October 3, 2022
Intel files for Mobileye IPO, creating a share structure that will keep the chipmaker in control

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After nearly a year’s wait, Mobileye is on the highway to Wall Street.

Intel Corp.
INTC,
-2.31%
-owned Mobileye Global Inc. launched its drive to an initial public offering in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Friday, leaving the size of the offering blank for now on what is expected to be one of the largest IPOs of the year.

Intel executives were targeting mid-2022 as of late last year, and filed confidentially with the SEC in March for the IPO of its self-driving-car unit, but the IPO market has been dry amid a decline for stocks, especially those that went public in a 2021 rush.

Mobileye plans to trade Class A shares of common stock on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol “MBLY,” the same symbol the company had before Intel acquired Mobileye in 2017 for $15.3 billion in cash. While selling shares in Mobileye, Intel will retain official control of the company, keeping class B shares that carry 10 votes apiece while selling class A shares that have only one vote.

Mobileye also plans to have four Intel-affiliated members on its board, including Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger serving as chairman of Mobileye’s board.

Intel will also get paid from the offering: Mobileye issued Intel a dividend note for $3.5 billion, and expects to pay that off with proceeds from the sale, according to the filing; there was an initial payment of $336 million, leaving more than $3 billion still owed to Intel. Earlier reporting suggested Intel would seek a $30 billion valuation for Mobileye in the IPO, though the initial filing Friday did not include targeted prices for the shares.

The filing did include financial information, though: Mobileye reported revenue of $1.39 billion in 2021, well ahead of Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
-0.66%,
which reported fiscal-year revenue of $566 million in auto chip sales in January. Mobileye reported a loss of $70 million last year, compared with a $196 million loss in 2020 and $328 million in 2019. Revenue in the first half of this year hit $854 million, growing 41% in the second quarter from the year before.

The filing lists a whopping 24 underwriters for the deal including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore ISI, Barclays, Citigroup, and B of A Securities.

Shares of Intel were up 0.5% after hours Friday, following a 2.3% decline in the regular session to close at $25.77.

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September 30, 2022

Tag: industrial news

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