Tag: results

Delta Air Strains (DAL) outcomes Q1 2021

Post author By
Post date April 15, 2021

A Delta Airlines Boeing 757-251 approaches Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia on February 24, 2021.

Daniel Slim | AFP | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines reported another quarterly loss on Thursday but expects to break even in June as demand for travel rebounds after a deep slump in the Covid pandemic.

Delta and its competitors continue to lose money, but have become optimistic about bookings improving as more travelers are vaccinated, travel restrictions are lifted and more attractions reopen. The airline said domestic leisure bookings rebounded to about 85% from 2019 levels, although international and business travel remains depressed.

Bookings in March doubled from January, CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”. However, he added that the demand for business travel for this time of year is only 20% of the norm.

“When I look at the first quarter, it became clear to us that our business has taken a turn,” said Bastian. “We have seen a huge increase in bookings over the past few months.”

The Atlanta-based airline, which was the first to report results this quarter, posted a net loss of $ 1.18 billion on revenue of $ 4.15 billion from January through March, a 60% decrease from that month Delta generated $ 10.47 billion in Q1 2019 based on that, which is a loss of $ 3.55 per share, compared to a forecast of $ 3.17 per share.

Delta forecast a 50% to 55% drop in revenue for the second quarter compared to the same period in 2019 with planned capacity one-third lower than two years ago. The cost of cutting fuel costs will rise 6% to 9% this quarter, it said. These costs include a race to train pilots paused during the pandemic or flight pilots flying various types of aircraft in time for the midsummer travel season.

The capacity and revenue forecast “calls for a slower than expected near-term recovery,” Cowen & Co. wrote in a note after the results were released.

Delta’s shares fell more than 3% in the early afternoon.

Bastian said in an earnings release that the company expects “positive cash generation for the June quarter and sees a way to return to profitability in the September quarter as demand continues to recover”.

Here’s how Delta outperformed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter, based on Refinitiv’s average estimates:

Adjusted earnings per share: a loss of $ 3.55 versus an expected loss of $ 3.17 per share
Total sales: $ 4.15 billion versus expected $ 3.91 billion in sales

The airline is the last US airline to block center seats. This practice started earlier in the pandemic to make customers feel better about flying. Delta will be releasing this policy next month.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on Wednesday found that laboratory models show that physically distancing passengers on board can reduce exposure to the virus that causes Covid-19 by up to 57%. The study did not consider face masks that are required by the federal government on flights.

Bastian defended the decision to sell all seats on Delta’s planes and disagreed with the study’s conclusions as the researchers failed to enforce pandemic safety protocols.

“Our experts tell us that given the vaccination rates they are at and the demand for such a high vaccination rate, it is perfectly safe to sit in that middle seat,” he said.

Tags Air, DAL, Delta, lines, results

Business

Amazon Vote Depend Outcomes: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date April 9, 2021

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Bob Miller for The New York Times

The counting of ballots in the closely watched unionization drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., is set to resume Friday at 8:30 a.m. Central time.

With about half the ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had an advantage of more than 2-to-1 over those in favor, according to a live broadcast of the counting that was tallied by The New York Times. When the counting paused, there were 1,100 votes against unionization and 463 in support.

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse. The union must get support from more than half of the votes cast to prevail.

Unofficial Tally of Amazon Warehouse Unionization Votes

1,608 yes votes are needed for the union to win today.

The New York Times·As of 9:39 a.m. Hundreds of ballots have been contested, which could delay either side from reaching the threshold. One ballot was marked as void.

The ballots were being counted in random order in the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Birmingham, Ala., and the process was broadcast via Zoom to more than 200 journalists, lawyers and other observers.

The voting was conducted by mail from early February until the end of last month. A handful of workers from the labor board called out the results of each vote “Yes” for a union or “No” for nearly four hours on Thursday.

Amazon and the union had spent more than a week in closed sessions, reviewing the eligibility of each ballot cast with the labor board, the federal agency that conducts union elections. The union said several hundred ballots had been contested, largely by Amazon, and those ballots were set aside to be adjudicated and counted only if they were vital to determining an outcome. If Amazon’s large margin holds steady throughout the count, the contested ballots are likely to be moot.

The incomplete tally put Amazon on the cusp of defeating the most serious organized-labor threat in the company’s history. Running a prominent campaign since the fall, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union aimed to establish the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. The result will have major implications not only for Amazon but also for organized labor and its allies.

Labor organizers have tapped into dissatisfaction with working conditions in the warehouse, saying Amazon’s pursuit of efficiency and profits makes the conditions harsh for workers. The company counters that its starting wage of $15 an hour exceeds what other employers in the area pay, and it has urged workers to vote against unionizing.

Amazon has always fought against unionizing by its workers. But the vote in Alabama comes at a perilous moment for the company. Lawmakers and regulators — not competitors — are some of its greatest threats, and it has spent significant time and money trying to keep the government away from its business.

The union drive has had the retailer doing a political balancing act: staying on the good side of Washington’s Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled he supported.

Labor leaders and liberal Democrats have seized on the union drive, saying it shows how Amazon is not as friendly to workers as the company says it is. Some of the company’s critics are also using its resistance to the union push to argue that Amazon should not be trusted on other issues, like climate change and the federal minimum wage.

Sophia June contributed to this report.

Credit…Matt Mcknight/Reuters

Boeing said Friday it had notified 16 customers of a potential electrical issue with its troubled 737 Max plane and recommended that they temporarily stop flying some planes.

Boeing said airlines should verify that “that a sufficient ground path exists for a component of the electrical power system” on certain Max planes. The statement comes just months after airlines resumed flying the jet, which had been grounded for nearly two years because of a pair of accidents that killed nearly 350 people.

“We are working closely with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on this production issue,” Boeing said in a statement. “We are also informing our customers of specific tail numbers affected and we will provide direction on appropriate corrective actions.”

Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest customers of the plane, said that 30 of its 58 Max jets were affected by the notification and that it was swapping those planes out for now. The airline is only flying 15 or fewer Max jets each day.

“Southwest anticipates minimal disruption to our operation, and we appreciate the understanding of our customers and employees as safety is always our uncompromising priority,” it said in a statement.

The Max was banned from flying globally in March 2019 after the crashes. After a lengthy review, the F.A.A. allowed the Max to fly again in November, provided that Boeing and airlines make required changes to the jet, including updating its flight control software.

Since then, aviation regulators around the world have followed suit and the plane has been used on thousands of flights.

Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The White House budget office will release the first fragments of President Biden’s budget proposals to Congress on Friday, providing a fresh sense of his priorities as lawmakers wait on his administration’s full budget.

Officials have stressed that the document — which will outline plans for discretionary spending within government agencies — is not a formal budget and will not include tax proposals or so-called mandatory spending in areas like Social Security. Instead, it will provide overall funding levels for agencies, like the Treasury and Defense Department, and some detail on proposed spending across the administration in areas like combating climate change.

The request will cover the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in October. White House officials had originally announced it would be released last week, before pushing back the timeline. The budget office does not have a confirmed director, after Mr. Biden’s first pick for the job, Neera Tanden, withdrew from consideration amid Republican opposition centered on her past statements on Twitter that were critical of conservatives.

Shalanda D. Young, who was confirmed by the Senate last month to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, is serving as Mr. Biden’s acting budget director.

Officials have promised that Mr. Biden’s full budget will be released later this spring. They have blamed delays on a lack of cooperation from outgoing members of the Trump administration.

“Well there’s no question, as we talked about during the transition, that we dealt with some impactful intransigence from the outgoing political appointees,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week.

“We had some cooperation from the career staff, but we didn’t have all of the information that we needed,” she added. “As you all know, we also don’t have a budget director. We have not had a budget director confirmed. We have now an acting budget director, which is an important step forward.”

Congress, which is responsible for approving government spending, is under no requirement to adhere to the White House budget, which is generally viewed as a political messaging document. In recent years, lawmakers rejected many of the Trump administration’s efforts to gut domestic programs.

Officials say the proposal that will be released on Friday will not reflect the details in Mr. Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which he introduced last week, or of a second plan he has yet to roll out, which will focus on what officials call “human infrastructure” like education and child care.

Credit…Kate Munsch/Reuters

After weeks of wading into the debate over how to regulate SPACS, the popular blank-check deals that provide companies a back door to public markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending its first shot across the bow.

John Coates, the acting director of the corporate finance division at the S.E.C., issued a lengthy statement on Thursday about how securities laws apply to blank-check firms, the DealBook newsletter reports.

In particular, he is interested in a crucial (and controversial) difference between SPACs and traditional initial public offerings: blank-check firms are allowed to publish often-rosy financial forecasts when merging with an acquisition target, while companies going public in an I.P.O. are not.

“With the unprecedented surge has come unprecedented scrutiny,” Mr. Coates wrote of the recent boom in blank-check deals.

Investors raise money for SPACs via an I.P.O. of a shell company, and those funds are used to merge with an unspecified company within two years, which then also becomes a publicly traded company. Because the deal is technically a merger, it’s given the same “safe harbor” legal protections for its financial forecasts as a typical M.& A. deal.

With traditional I.P.O.s, companies can’t issue such projections to prospective investors, because regulators consider it too risky for firms as yet untested by the public markets. And that’s why there are flying-taxi companies with little revenue going public via a SPAC while promising billions in sales far in the future.

The S.E.C. thinks allowing financial forecasts for these deals might be a problem. They can be “untested, speculative, misleading or even fraudulent,” Mr. Coates wrote. And he concludes his statement by suggesting a major rethink of how the “full panoply” of securities laws applies to SPACs, which could upend the blank-check business model.

If the S.E.C. does not treat SPAC deals as the I.P.Os they effectively are, he writes, “potentially problematic forward-looking information may be disseminated without appropriate safeguards.”

The letter serves as a warning, but perhaps not much else — yet. Unless the S.E.C. issues new rules (as it did for penny stocks) or Congress passes legislation, SPAC projections will continue. But this strongly worded statement could moderate or even mute them.

“The S.E.C. has now put them on notice,” Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant of the agency, said.

Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, companies used to lure top talent with lavish perks like subsidized massages, Pilates classes and free gourmet meals. Now, the hottest enticement is permission to work not just from home, but from anywhere — even, say, from the French Alps or a Caribbean island.

Revolut, a banking start-up based in London, said Thursday that it would allow its more than 2,000 employees to work abroad for up to two months a year in response to requests to visit overseas family for longer periods.

“Our employees asked for flexibility, and that’s what we’re giving them as part of our ongoing focus on employee experience and choice,” said Jim MacDougall, Revolut’s vice president of human resources.

Georgia Pacquette-Bramble, a communications manager for Revolut, said she was planning to trade the winter in London for Spain or somewhere in the Caribbean. Other colleagues have talked about spending time with family abroad.

Revolut has been valued at $5.5 billion, making it one of Europe’s most valuable financial technology firms. It joins a number of companies that will allow more flexible working arrangements to continue after the pandemic ends. JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, Ford Motor and Target have said they are giving up office space as they expect workers to spend less time in the office, and Spotify has told employees they can work from anywhere.

Not all companies, however, are shifting away from the office. Tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, have added office space in New York over the last year. Amazon told employees it would “return to an office-centric culture as our baseline.”

Dr. Dan Wang, an associate professor at Columbia Business School, said he did not expect office-centric companies to lose top talent to companies that allow flexible working, in part because many employees prefer to work from the office.

Furthermore, when employees are not in the same space, there are fewer spontaneous interactions, and spontaneity is critical for developing ideas and collaborating, Dr. Wang said.

“There is a cost,” he said. “Yes, we can interact via email, via Slack, via Zoom — we’ve all gotten used to that. But part of it is that we’ve lowered our expectations for what social interaction actually entails.”

Revolut said it studied tax laws and regulations before introducing its policy, and that each request to work from abroad was subject to an internal review and approval process. But for some companies looking to put a similar policy in place, a hefty tax bill, or at least a complicated tax return, could be a drawback.

Online stores offering counterfeit or stolen vaccine cards have mushroomed in recent weeks, according to Saoud Khalifah, the founder of FakeSpot, which offers tools to detect fake listings and reviews online.

The efforts are far from hidden, with Facebook pages named “vax-cards” and eBay listings with “blank vaccine cards” openly hawking the items, Sheera Frenkel reports for The New York Times.

Last week, 45 state attorneys general banded together to call on Twitter, Shopify and eBay to stop the sale of false and stolen vaccine cards.

Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Shopify and Etsy said that the sale of fake vaccine cards violated their rules and that they were removing posts that advertised the items.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced the vaccination cards in December, describing them as the “simplest” way to keep track of Covid-19 shots. By January, sales of false vaccine cards started picking up, Mr. Khalifah said. Many people found the cards were easy to forge from samples available online. Authentic cards were also stolen by pharmacists from their workplaces and put up for sale, he said.

Many people who bought the cards were opposed to the Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Khalifah said. In some anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, people have publicly boasted about getting the cards.

Other buyers want to use the cards to trick pharmacists into giving them a vaccine, Mr. Khalifah said. Because some of the vaccines are two-shot regimens, people can enter a false date for a first inoculation on the card, which makes it appear as if they need a second dose soon. Some pharmacies and state vaccination sites have prioritized people due for their second shots.

Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times

In only a year, the market value of office towers in Manhattan has plummeted 25 percent, according to city projections released on Wednesday.

Across the country, the vacancy rate for office buildings in city centers has steadily climbed over the past year to reach 16.4 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the highest in about a decade. That number could climb further if companies keep giving up office space because of hybrid or fully remote work, Peter Eavis and Matthew Haag report for The New York Times.

So far, landlords like Boston Properties and SL Green have not suffered huge financial losses, having survived the past year by collecting rent from tenants locked into long leases — the average contract for office space runs about seven years.

But as leases come up for renewal, property owners could be left with scores of empty floors. At the same time, many new office buildings are under construction — 124 million square feet nationwide, or enough for roughly 700,000 workers. Those changes could drive down rents, which were touching new highs before the pandemic. And rents help determine assessments that are the basis for property tax bills.

Many big employers have already given notice to the owners of some prestigious buildings that they are leaving when their leases end. JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor, Salesforce, Target and more are giving up expensive office space and others are considering doing so.

The stock prices of the big landlords, which are often structured as real estate investment trusts that pass almost all of their profit to investors, trade well below their previous highs. Shares of Boston Properties, one of the largest office landlords, are down 29 percent from the prepandemic high. SL Green, a major New York landlord, is 26 percent lower.

Credit…Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

U.S. stock futures rose on Friday along with government bond yields after the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, reiterated his intention to keep supporting the economic recovery until it is complete.
The rollout of vaccinations meant the United States economy could probably reopen soon, but the recovery was still “uneven and incomplete,” Mr. Powell said at the International Monetary Fund annual conference on Thursday.
He pointed out that the economic burden of the pandemic was falling most heavily on low-income service workers who were least able to bear it. “I really want to finish the job and get back to a great economy,” Mr. Powell said.
The yield on 10-year Treasury notes jumped 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.67 percent. The yield on 10-year government bonds rose across Europe, too.

Stocks, low volatility and oil prices

The S&P 500 index was set to open 0.1 percent higher and has risen 0.4 percent so far this week.
The relatively quiet week in the stock market has sent the VIX index, a measure of volatility, to its lowest level since February 2020. The index was at 17 points on Friday. In mid-March, as the pandemic shut down huge parts of the global economy, it spiked above 80.
European stock indexes were mixed on Friday, though the Stoxx Europe 600 was heading for its sixth straight week of gains. The DAX index in Germany rose 0.1 percent after data showed an unexpected drop in industrial production.
Oil prices rose slightly with futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, 0.2 percent higher to $59.70 a barrel.

Tags Amazon, Count, Live, results, Updates, Vote

Business

RH (RH) This fall 2020 earnings outcomes

Post author By
Post date March 25, 2021

Jason Kempin | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Furniture retailer RH, formerly Restoration Hardware, reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales ahead of Wall Street estimates on Wednesday as it continued to see robust demand for quality furniture and housewares.

CEO Gary Friedman said the momentum is expected to continue this year. In 2021, sales are expected to grow between 15% and 20% compared to the previous year. That includes expected revenue growth of at least 50% in the first quarter, he said, as the company passes a time when its brick and mortar stores have been temporarily closed due to the Covid pandemic.

“The fact that we have a booming real estate market, record equity market, low interest rates, expectations of economic and labor recovery combined with the recent further acceleration in our demand trends makes us feel more than less optimistic,” Friedman said in a letter to the shareholders.

The RH share gained more than 9% in after-hours trading.

Here’s how the company performed for the quarter ended January 30, compared to the expectations of analysts surveyed by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $ 5.07 versus $ 4.76 expected
Revenue: $ 813 million versus $ 798 million expected

It reported net income of $ 130.19 million, or $ 4.31 per share, compared to $ 68.43 million, or $ 2.66 per share, last year. With no one-time expense, the company made $ 5.07 per share, better than what analysts had been expecting $ 4.76.

Net sales increased from $ 664.98 million a year ago to $ 812.44 million. Adjusted for the cost of goods sold and inventory costs related to product recalls, the company had revenue of $ 812.62 million, exceeding analysts’ expectations of $ 798 million.

In fiscal 2020, RH sales increased 8% to $ 2.85 billion.

“We’re building the world’s most comprehensive and compelling collection of luxury home furnishings,” said Friedman. “The desirability and exclusivity of our product, enhanced in our inspiring spaces, has enabled us to gain significant market share.”

RH’s growth plans in the coming years include further expansion in the food, hospitality and even housing sectors.

The company is planning a shared apartment in Aspen, Colorado. Friedman told analysts on Wednesday that RH had already received several unsolicited proposals to buy homes.

Later in the fall, the first guesthouse concept opens in New York City. In the next year, the overseas business will be brought to Europe, England and Paris.

RH continues to expect this year to be the largest for product launches in the company’s history. Due to the pandemic, it held back the introduction of new home and outdoor collections in 2020. But this week a catalog with 10 new outdoor collections will be sent to customers, which initiated a massive rollout.

The RH share has risen by more than 375% in the past 12 months at the market close on Wednesday. It has a market capitalization of $ 9.3 billion.

The full press release from RH can be found here.

Tags earnings, results

Business

U.S. Well being Officers Query AstraZeneca Vaccine Trial Outcomes

Post author By
Post date March 23, 2021

U.S. Health Officials Question AstraZeneca Vaccine Trial Results

This US trial, which was attended by more than 32,000 participants, was the largest test of its kind for the shot. The results, AstraZeneca released on Monday, came from an interim look at the data after 141 Covid-19 cases occurred in volunteers.

The company had only announced on Tuesday how up-to-date this data was. This information is important because sometimes a more up-to-date look at clinical trial results may reveal different efficacy and safety.

If the analysis was done on data from a month or two ago, it is possible that a more recent look may give a different picture of the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety. The company has announced that it will provide the FDA with a more comprehensive and up-to-date dataset than it released on Monday. Although no clinical study is large enough to rule out extremely rare side effects, AstraZeneca reported that its study did not identify any serious safety issues.

The new data may have arrived too late to make a big difference in the United States, where the vaccine has not yet been approved and is not expected to be available until May. By then, federal officials say, there will be enough vaccine doses for all adults in the country from the three already approved vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Even so, the better-than-expected results have been seen as an encouraging turn for AstraZeneca’s shot, whose low cost and simple storage requirements have made it an important part of the quest to vaccinate the world.

The results were also believed to allay concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe. Regulators there said the shot was “safe and effective” last week after conducting a review after a small number of people who had recently been vaccinated developed blood clots and abnormal bleeding. The US study found no evidence of such problems, although some real-world safety issues can only be identified when a drug or vaccine is widely used.

Millions of people have received the AstraZeneca shot worldwide, including more than 17 million in the UK and the European Union, almost all without serious side effects. To increase public confidence, many European political leaders have received the injections in the past few days. The AstraZeneca vaccine was also given to executives in South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand last week.

Tags AstraZeneca, health, Officials, question, results, trial, Vaccine

Politics

The Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Outcomes.

Post author By
Post date February 19, 2021

The Virginia G.O.P. Voted on Its Future. The Losers Reject the Results.

On the second front, how a convention would work, Republicans are grappling with a state ban on most gatherings of more than 10 people. As a result, the party cannot hold a personal meeting of several thousand people. Party leaders are trying to change their rules to allow for a congress that will be held in dozens of locations in Virginia.

This requires the approval of three-quarters of the members of the state central committee – a threshold that has not yet been reached, as 31 of the 72 members of the committee are campaigning for a primary school. In other words, these Republicans are trying to block the possibility of a convention in the hope that eventually a primary will have to be held.

“The fact that there is a minority faction that has lost and is standing in the way of a safe convention to try to get the primary that they can’t win fair – that says a lot about them,” said Patti Lyman, who Republican national committee woman for Virginia. “All of their arguments can be reduced to the following: We have lost and we don’t like it.”

Ms. Chase, who still argued with less than a week in Mr. Trump’s presidency that he could still be inaugurated for a second term, said Thursday that she “does not trust conventions” to which she is wrongly restricting electoral access Members of the military and others who cannot make it to a personal website.

“If we’re going to win as Republicans, we have to get more voters, who vote Republicans, rather than fewer,” she said. “Stop creating so many barriers for people who would normally choose.”

Some proponents of a convention advocate ranking voting, a system promoted by progressives elsewhere. The dispute threatens to undermine the already tough Republican struggle in this year’s elections and to extend democratic control of the state.

At the center of the party’s argument is a crowded group of Republican gubernatorial candidates, each with a candidate from the Trump and Establishment wings of the GOP and two wealthy wildcards. The main candidates are Ms. Chase; Kirk Cox, a former State House Speaker who is the party’s elected legislature favorite; Pete Snyder, a technology millionaire who lost an offer for lieutenant governor nomination at a party conference in 2013; and Glenn Youngkin, an even richer former private equity executive who is new to politics.

Tags future, GOP, Losers, reject, results, Virginia, voted

Business

American Airways surges after better-than-expected outcomes, squeezing brief sellers

Post author By
Post date January 28, 2021

American Airlines surges after better-than-expected results, squeezing short sellers

An American Airlines Airbus A321-200 aircraft takes off at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in Los Angeles, California.

Mike Blake | Reuters

American Airlines shares rose Thursday after posting less-than-expected loss and higher sales than analysts forecast.

Shares rose more than 7% in the late morning, after rising as much as 31% at the beginning of the session. Analysts were quick to say the big move early Thursday wasn’t based on the state of American business. The airline and its competitors are battling to get a foothold in the coronavirus pandemic, and American posted a record annual net loss of $ 8.9 billion.

The airline is the worst-shortened U.S. carrier, according to FactSet, and the big move comes after explosive rallies at other sharply shortened stocks, GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings.

Those names popped up on Reddit’s WallStreetBets chat room, where a wave of home traders bought sharply-discounted stocks, skyrocketed, and drove out short-selling of hedge funds. Short positions are bets that stocks will fall when an investor or trader sells a stock with an agreement to buy it later when they think the price will fall and they can pocket the profits.

Short’s percentage of American Airlines stock far exceeds that of its competitors. Short interest in American was 25% of the company’s free float, according to FactSet, compared to 14% for Spirit Airlines and about 5% for United Airlines.

“We don’t think the move is fundamentally driven as the outlook for Americans is similar to what we’ve heard in this earnings cycle,” said Helane Becker, an analyst for Cowen & Co. airline. “We believe the move was due to risk reduction in the marketplace and American remains one of the most consensual short airlines in our coverage universe.”

She said Americans could take advantage of this rally to offer stocks. Americans’ profits in premarket trading had exceeded 80% at one point during premarket trading.

CNBC’s Yun Li contributed to this report.

Tags Airlines, American, betterthanexpected, results, sellers, short, squeezing, Surges

Health

Johnson & Johnson Expects Covid Vaccine Outcomes Quickly however Lags in Manufacturing

Post author By
Post date January 14, 2021

Johnson & Johnson Expects Covid Vaccine Results Soon but Lags in Production

Johnson & Johnson expects to release critical results from its Covid-19 vaccine trial in as little as two weeks — a potential boon in the effort to protect Americans from the coronavirus — but most likely won’t be able to provide as many doses this spring as it promised the federal government because of unanticipated manufacturing delays.

If the vaccine can strongly protect people against Covid-19, as some outside scientists expect, it would offer big advantages over the two vaccines authorized in the United States. Unlike those products, which require two doses, Johnson & Johnson’s could need just one, greatly simplifying logistics for local health departments and clinics struggling to get shots in arms. What’s more, its vaccine can stay stable in a refrigerator for months, whereas the others have to be frozen.

But the encouraging prospect of a third effective vaccine is tempered by apparent lags in the company’s production. In the company’s $1 billion contract signed with the federal government in August, Johnson & Johnson pledged to have 12 million doses of its vaccine ready by the end of February, ramping up to a total of 100 million doses by the end of June.

Federal officials have been told that the company has fallen as much as two months behind the original production schedule and won’t catch up until the end of April, when it was supposed to have delivered more than 60 million doses, according to two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Carlo de Notaristefani, lead manufacturing adviser for Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine development program, acknowledged a delay, but said the company might be able to catch up with initial production goals by March.

“I agree there was a problem,” Dr. de Notaristefani said. But he added, “Manufacturing of pharmaceuticals is not a black box where you turn the key and start counting.”

Any delay could be critical because the federal government has secured only enough vaccine doses to inoculate 200 million of the roughly 260 million eligible adults in the first half of this year. With the nation in the grip of its largest surge of the coronavirus to date and the death toll escalating to as high as 4,000 a day, Americans desperate to be vaccinated are lining the sidewalks outside vaccination centers.

Fears about the virus have only escalated with the scientific discovery last month that the country has been seeded with a new, highly contagious variant. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced it would no longer hold back vaccine stocks for second doses in order to get more people at least partly vaccinated more quickly.

Dr. Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, said he expected to see clinical trial data showing whether his company’s vaccine is safe and effective in late January or early February. But he declined to provide details about the company’s production capacity.

“We are not ready to release the numbers month by month at the moment, as we are in the discussion with the F.D.A.,” he said.

If the data is positive and the Food and Drug Administration authorizes the vaccine for emergency use, he added, “hopefully somewhere in March we’ll be able to contribute” to the nation’s vaccination drive.

That Johnson & Johnson’s timetable has slipped is not unusual given the frantic pace of vaccine development amid the worst pandemic in a century. But the delay also highlights the unrealistic promises of Operation Warp Speed.

The premise of the program was that the federal government would front the costs of development and manufacturing so that vaccine makers could mass-produce doses even before the vaccines were proved to work. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for Warp Speed, said in December that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would be a “game changer” in the pandemic.

But at a Tuesday news conference, Dr. Slaoui said that instead of 12 million doses envisioned in the contract by the end of February, the company was likely to have in the “single-digit” millions. He also said the company was “trying to make that number get as close to a double-digit number as possible, and then a larger number in March and a much larger number in April.” Another person familiar with the company’s progress said it was poised to deliver only perhaps three million or four million doses of its vaccine by the end of next month.

In a statement, a Johnson & Johnson spokesman said, “We are confident we can meet our contractual obligations to supply our vaccine candidate to the U.S. government.”

Dr. de Notaristefani, Operation Warp Speed’s manufacturing chief, said the government’s contracts with vaccine makers were written at a time of great uncertainty, with the understanding that unforeseen obstacles could throw off the timetables. “Numbers are never cast in stone when you start a new process,” he said, adding that the company had to transfer its manufacturing from the Netherlands to a plant in Baltimore. “I really think that technically they couldn’t do it earlier.”

Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said that state health officials were clearly excited about Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine.

Covid-19 Vaccines ›

Answers to Your Vaccine Questions

If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine?

While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.

When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated?

Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.

If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they’re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.

Will it hurt? What are the side effects?

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.

Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?

No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.

“You can get it and you’re done,” he said. “Everybody is eager to have it out there. It has a lot of potential.”

But even if Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine pans out, Dr. Plescia said, it won’t be enough. He predicted that state health departments would need a total of four vaccines in the next six months if they hope to reach their goals of offering a vaccine to every American who wants one.

“Or else the public is going to get very frustrated, because they’re ready for it to be opened up and there isn’t adequate supply to do that,” Dr. Plescia said.

Johnson & Johnson is by no means alone in its manufacturing delays. Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, told investors last fall that his company had agreed to deliver 40 million doses of its vaccine to the federal government in 2020, assuming it proved successful in clinical trials. In the end, the company had only half that many ready to ship.

No one — including company executives — knows whether Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine will work. But Lynda Coughlin, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is not involved in the trial, said that the design of the vaccine and the results from early trials made her optimistic.

“Hopefully the results from Johnson & Johnson are just really going to knock it out of the park,” she said.

Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine is fundamentally different from the authorized vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. Those two consist of genetic molecules encased in oily bubbles. Johnson & Johnson built its vaccine from a virus that causes common colds, known as an adenovirus.

Testing the vaccine on monkeys, the researchers found that a single shot was enough to protect the animals from infection. When they tried out different formulations of the vaccine in early clinical trials, they were pleased to see that the vaccine prompted a strong antibody response with a single dose.

On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson researchers and their colleagues published the full details of these early clinical trials in the New England Journal of Medicine. They reported that when they checked the blood of volunteers 71 days after receiving a single dose, their levels of coronavirus antibodies were still high. In some cases they were still increasing.

As results of the early clinical trials emerged over the summer, the company had to make a high-stakes decision: proceed with a clinical trial of two doses, which had the most likelihood of success, or try one with a single dose, which would be far more useful for getting shots to the masses — if it worked. The company decided to roll the dice with a single-shot trial.

“We know from vaccination campaigns that the simpler the logistics, the more successful the program,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who pioneered adenovirus vaccines in the early 2000s and collaborated with Johnson & Johnson researchers on the trial.

If many people began developing immunity from a single-shot dose, it might become harder for the virus to move from person to person, bringing down the high rates of new cases and easing the burden of the pandemic.

“A vaccine that is one dose would have a tremendous, tremendous public health impact, of course for low-income countries, but also in high-income countries,” said Ruth Faden, a professor of biomedical ethics at Johns Hopkins University.

While other vaccine developers moved quickly into late-stage trials, Johnson & Johnson deliberately moved more slowly so it could focus on ramping up manufacturing of its vaccine. At a facility in the Netherlands, researchers grew cells in which their adenoviruses could multiply. Adjusting the chemistry in giant vats, the scientists found a recipe for producing the vaccine at a fast, reliable rate.

Johnson & Johnson also began working early with other companies to prepare to manufacture the vaccine across the world. In April, it announced a partnership with the Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions to manufacture the vaccine for the United States. Researchers from Johnson & Johnson began visiting Emergent BioSolutions starting that month to help it prepare for producing the adenoviruses.

“It was much more than a paper exercise: ‘Here’s the recipe, follow this,’” said Remo Colarusso, vice president at Janssen Supply Chain. “This is complex manufacturing.”

By the fall, Emergent BioSolutions was growing cells that were spewing out new adenoviruses. When Johnson & Johnson announced the start of its final Phase 3 trial, executives began making aggressive projections. “We are now committed to make more than one billion doses during 2021, and more after that,” Dr. Stoffels said at a September news conference.

The company then secured more deals to provide the vaccine to countries around the world. In 2021, Johnson & Johnson has promised to supply 200 million doses to Covax, an international partnership seeking to distribute coronavirus vaccines to nations that would not otherwise be able to afford them. It will supply another 300 million to Covax in 2022.

Soon after Johnson & Johnson started its trial, cases surged around the world. All the Phase 3 clinical trials of Covid vaccines accelerated because trials end only after a specified number of volunteers — from both the placebo and vaccinated groups — get sick. In November, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine trials both delivered impressive results, with efficacy rates around 95 percent.

The F.D.A. authorized both vaccines for the United States, and other countries soon followed suit. But these two vaccines had some major shortcomings that soon became impossible to ignore. Both vaccines have to be kept in a deep freeze to prevent them from degrading. Once they reach a hospital or clinic, they have to be used before they spoil. In New York City and elsewhere, unused vaccines have ended up in the trash.

Once data collection is complete at the end of January or early February, an advisory board will review the data and report its analysis on safety and efficacy to Johnson & Johnson. F.D.A. regulators are already evaluating manufacturing data weeks ahead of when Johnson & Johnson is expected to apply for emergency authorization. Hiccups as small as mold in part of a facility could spur further delays.

Katie Thomas contributed reporting.

Tags Covid, expects, Johnson, Lags, production, results, Vaccine

Politics

Texas sues 4 battleground states in Supreme Court docket over ‘illegal election outcomes’

Post author By Gloria Cote
Post date December 8, 2020

Texas sues four battleground states in Supreme Court over 'unlawful election results'

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the results of the presidential election results in four major swing states that helped defeat Democrat Joe Biden President Donald Trump secure.

The unusual lawsuit, filed directly with the Supreme Court, alleges that “unlawful election results” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan – all won by Biden – should be declared unconstitutional.

Legal experts were quick to dismiss the case as a political theater with no precedent in American history.

The filing argues that these states used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to unlawfully change their electoral rules “through executive fiat or amicable lawsuits which weakened the integrity of the ballot papers”.

“All electoral college votes cast by such presidential voters appointed” in these states “cannot be counted,” Texas urges the Supreme Court to rule.

The Lone Star State’s attempt to devalue other states’ electoral votes follows a series of long-term legal challenges with similar goals that have been brought to court by Trump’s campaign and other lawyers. These lawsuits have repeatedly failed to invalidate the ballots cast for Biden.

The allegations in the Texas lawsuit “are false and irresponsible,” Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said in a fiery statement shortly after Paxton announced legal action.

“Texas claims that there are 80,000 forged signatures on postal ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring up a single person to whom this happened. That’s because it didn’t,” Fuchs said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel called the suit a “publicity stunt” and “below the dignity” of Paxton’s office. Josh Kaul, the Wisconsin attorney general, said in a statement the case was “really embarrassing.”

Suffrage experts also quickly dismissed the likelihood that the nine Supreme Court justices would open the case. Paul Smith, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who argued over proxy cases in the Supreme Court, said the case was “insane”.

“Pennsylvania and the rest of the world have a whole system of voting through the election – that’s all,” said Smith, who also serves as vice president of litigation and strategy for the Justice Center for Impartial Campaigns. “I don’t think the Supreme Court will be interested.”

The professor added that Texas may have difficulty proving that it has grounds for action that are legally known as “standing”.

“It is completely unprecedented for any state to claim in the Supreme Court that other states’ votes were cast incorrectly – that never happened,” he said. “What is the violation of the state of Texas because Pennsylvania’s votes were cast for Mr. Biden instead of Mr. Trump? There is no connection there.”

Rick Hasen, an electoral law expert at the University of California at Irvine, wrote on his popular legal blog that the lawsuit was “utter rubbish,” and also denied the idea that Texas stood, noting that “it has no say like other states vote for voters. “

Paxton wrote in the letter that Texas stands because of its interest in which party controls the Senate, which it says “represents the states”.

“While Americans are probably more concerned with who is elected president, states have a clear interest in who is elected vice president and who can thus cast the decisive vote in the Senate,” he wrote.

“This violation is particularly acute in 2020, when a Senate majority often maintains a tie for the vice president as the balance between the Georgia elections in January is nearly the same – and may be the same depending on the outcome of the Georgia runoffs.” political parties, “added Paxton.

The lawsuit against the four states ends with a critical deadline in the electoral certification process known as the “Safe Harbor” threshold. Thereafter, Congress is forced to accept the states’ certified results.

Six days later, the electoral college voters will cast their votes, marking Biden’s victory. The lawsuit also calls on the Supreme Court to extend the December 14 deadline “so that these investigations can be completed”.

In most cases, the Supreme Court hears only lower court cases that have been appealed. In cases between two or more states, however, the court originally has jurisdiction. Usually four judges have to agree to hear a case.

The lawsuit comes when Paxton faces a criminal investigation by the FBI into alleged efforts to help a wealthy campaign donor. The investigation was confirmed by The Associated Press after seven senior lawyers in Paxton’s office accused authorities in September that Paxton was guilty of abuse of his office.

All seven have since been fired, on leave or resigned, which has led several of them to file whistleblower lawsuits. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.

The case is not the first on election to reach the judges, although the court has not yet made a substantial decision on either side. In another lawsuit that the court may soon weigh, Pennsylvania’s Republican Representative Mike Kelly, an ally of Trump, is challenging virtually all of the state’s postal ballot papers and asking the court to nullify millions of votes.

Biden is expected to win 306 electoral college votes – 36 more than needed to beat Trump, who is said to receive 232 such votes.

But Trump refuses to allow Biden. The president, more than a month after election day, continues to falsely insist that he has won the race while promoting a wide range of unproven conspiracy theories allegedly pointing to election or election fraud.

The president is also pressuring swing state officials to take action to discard the results of their elections. Trump has heavily criticized Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, furiously demanding that he convene a special session of the Peach State Legislature to appoint pro-Trump voters.

Trump has personally reached out to Kemp and Pennsylvania House spokesman Bryan Cutler, according to Washington Post reports. In November, Trump received Michigan Republican lawmakers for a meeting at the White House. These lawmakers said after the event that they had no plans to replace Biden’s voters.

Even ahead of the election, Trump predicted that the Supreme Court would likely rule the results of the race and urged the GOP-controlled Senate to bank Justice Amy Coney Barrett in time.

However, in recent weeks, Trump has admitted that he is unlikely to turn the 2020 election results in court on its head as his legal challenges have stalled.

“Well, the problem is that getting to the Supreme Court is difficult,” Trump told Fox News last month in his first full interview since his November 3rd defeat.

“I have the best lawyers in the Supreme Court, attorneys who want to discuss the case when it gets there. They said, ‘It’s very hard to get a case up there,'” Trump added. “Can you imagine Donald Trump, President of the United States, filing a case and I probably can’t get a case.”

Tags battleground, Court, election, results, states, sues, Supreme, Texas, unlawful