Despite announcing what appears to be only good news over the last 30 days, the Airtasker Ltd (ASX: ART) share price has slipped 11.24%.

A month ago, shares in Airtasker would have set an investor back $1.29. Now, the Airtasker share price is trading lower at $1.15. So, what may have been driving the online outsourcing company’s share price lately?

The month that’s been for the Airtasker share price

The Airtasker share price fell 16% between the first trading session of May and its first announcement of the month.

Then, beginning in mid-May, Airtasker released 2 pieces of price-sensitive news to the market, both of which received positive reactions from ASX investors.

Let’s take a look at the recent news out of Airtasker.

Overseas expansion

On 21 May, Airtasker announced it was to acquire Zaarly.

Zaarly is a San Francisco-based local services marketplace. It has more than 597,000 users and more than 900 service providers.

Airtasker agreed to pay around $3.4 million for Zaarly.

The acquisition of Zaarly is Airtasker’s first overseas expansion effort. It plans to continue its expansion into the United Kingdom in due course. Airtasker’s shares went into a trading halt on announcing the acquisition

Capital raise

To fund the acquisition and its international growth plans, Airtasker completed a $20.7 million capital raising.

The capital raise involved 20.7 million new shares priced at $1 a piece offered to institutional, professional, and sophisticated investors.

The $1 price tag represented a 7.4% discount to the Airtasker share prices’ previous closing price.

The company announced the successful completion of the placement and unfroze its shares on 25 May.

That day, the Airtasker share price closed 12% higher than it did in its previous trading session.

Airtasker share price snapshot

Despite its recent fall, the Airtasker share price is still in the ASX green.

Currently, it’s 9.05% higher than it was when it debuted on the ASX in late March. Its opening share price was just $1.05.

The company has a market capitalisation of around $479 million, with approximately 413 million shares outstanding.

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The Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) share price is trading broadly flat at $56.25 on Thursday following the release of its strategy briefing.

Listed below are a few key takeaways from the strategy briefing:

Wesfarmers’ retail businesses growing on a two-year basis

The company notes that its retail businesses have been cycling the impacts of COVID-19 in the prior year from mid-March. This has led to significant volatility in monthly sales growth results. However, on a two-year basis, all of Wesfarmers’ retail businesses have continued to record strong sales growth. Management believes this reflects their ability to provide safe and trusted environments while delivering greater value, quality and convenience for customers.

Online sales growth is moderating

As we have seen with ecommerce company Kogan.com Ltd (ASX: KGN), Wesfarmers has experienced a moderation in its online sales growth after customer traffic to stores increased. This has resulted in a reduction in online penetration. It has also led to the Catch business’ gross transaction value growth being negative since mid-March. However, management notes that overall online penetration remains above pre-COVID levels.

Industrials businesses performing positively

Wesfarmers isn’t just Bunnings, Kmart, Catch, Officeworks, and Target, it also has a range of industrials businesses. These include Covalent Lithium, QNP, and CSBP. Pleasingly, the company revealed that positive trading has continued in the industrials segment and good operating performances have been achieved.

Kmart well-positioned

Management spoke positively about its Kmart business and believes it is well-positioned for sustainable long term growth. It continues to drive the growth of Kmart by leveraging scale and product development capabilities, completing the store conversion program and delivering digital initiatives. Another positive is that Kmart Group now expects to incur pre-tax, one-off non-operating costs of approximately $60 million to $70 million in FY 2021 relating to Target store closures and conversions. This is a reduction from its previous estimate of $90 million to $110 million.

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Sezzle Inc (ASX: SZL) shares are flying high in early trading on Thursday. At the time of writing, the Sezzle share price is rocketing 13.47% higher to $8.51.

This comes after the company provided an update on a new partnership deal with retailer Target in the United States.

New partnership

Sezzle shares are having a bumper morning following the company’s latest release.

In its statement to the ASX, Sezzle advised it’s entered into a 3-year agreement with retailing giant, Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT). The deal follows Sezzle completing its proof of concept (POC) with Target, which looked at the feasibility of teaming up.

Under the new agreement, Sezzle’s platform will be available in-store and across Target’s digital platforms. This will allow customers to make purchases at Target and take up Sezzle’s interest-free payment plans.

The latest partnership is considered significant to Sezzle, as Target reported first-quarter earnings of US$2.1 billion last month. This was well up on the US$284 million the United States retailer achieved in the prior corresponding period when lockdowns were in full force.

Sezzle’s underlying merchant sales for the same period rose to US$375.1 million, well up on the US$119.4 million figure from the previous year.

Quick take on Sezzle

Founded in 2016, Sezzle is a buy now, pay later (BNPL) company that offers customers the ability to shop online and pay over instalments. Repayments consist of 4 interest-free payments spread over a 6-week period.

As of March 2021, the BNPL business had more than 2.4 million active users and over 34,000 participating merchants. Sezzle operates largely in the United States and launched into Canada in 2019.

How has the Sezzle share price been performing?

It’s been a rollercoaster ride for Sezzle shareholders of late, with the company’s share price moving around sharply. Sezzle shares reached an all-time high of $11.99 in February this year, before falling to around the $7 mark in mid-May.

On valuation grounds, Sezzle commands a market capitalisation of roughly $870 million, with approximately 103 million shares outstanding.

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The travel industry generally has much upside in the post-COVID world, but one particular Australian business is looking especially good.

That’s according to Montgomery Private Fund portfolio manager Stuart Jackson, who reckons Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB) could take off soon.

“With many economies re-opening, unleashing a likely tsunami of pent-up travel demand, the future is looking brighter,” he said on a company blog post.

“While the current level of profitability remains impaired by the effects of the global pandemic, the market is looking for signs of sequential improvement as well as focusing on the company’s rate of cash burn to ensure it has enough capital to make it across the great divide.”

Webjet shares were up 2.94% on Wednesday to close the day at $5.26.

Webjet’s recovery really ramping up lately

Jackson noted that April was a bumper month for Webjet, generating $86.1 million of the total transaction value (TTV) generated through its “over the air” (OTA), or wireless, business.

“This means Webjet generated 87% of its TTV from the whole of the March quarter in just one month during April,” he said.

“TTV would have been around 75% of total 2019 levels in April, even without any international travel.”

The frenzied consumer activity after Easter this year (start of April) matches up with Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL)’s commentary during its quarterly update, according to Jackson.

Webjet’s market share is actually higher than before COVID

Webjet’s slice of the Australian OTA travel market is actually bigger than it was before the pandemic arrived.

In fact, it’s doubled — from 5.5% average market share for the 8 months to May 2020, compared to 11% since then.

“This is partially due to bricks-and-mortar travel agent traffic continuing to be impacted by [lack of] consumer willingness to go to malls and other locations,” said Jackson. 

“However, there is likely to have been a structural shift in online share as a result of COVID given that it will have introduced more of the population to this distribution channel.”

A competitive advantage for Webjet

Jackson pointed out that Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) is planning to reduce travel agency commissions for international flights from 5% to 1%, starting July next year.

The market has interpreted this as a headwind for all ASX travel shares, but it could turn out to be a boost for Webjet.

“In the case of Webjet it is important to recognise that it generates more of its revenue from domestic flights than international flights,” said Jackson.

“Additionally, unlike its competitors, Webjet generates a material proportion of its revenue from booking fees, which will not be impacted by the change to commission rates.”

Other travel agents would either need to take a hit in revenue or increase fares.

“This could end up representing a competitive advantage for Webjet over more traditional travel agents.”

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The Creso Pharma Ltd (ASX: CPH) share price is shooting higher on Thursday following a positive development.

In morning trade, the cannabis and psychedelics company’s shares are up 11% to 15.5 cents.

Why is the Creso share price shooting higher?

The catalyst for the rise in the Creso share price today has been a favourable regulatory shift in California.

This morning the company announced that it will expedite a Californian market entry following the recent passing of Senate Bill 519.

While the bill remains subject to further regulatory approval from California’s lower house and the Governor of California, if signed into law, it could make a wide range of psychedelic substances, including psilocybin, legal to use and possess for adults over the age of 21.

The company notes that the bill was introduced to progress a more health-focused approach to the use of psychedelic compounds and to address the current mental health crisis in the United States. It also marks the ongoing push towards acceptance of psychedelic compounds as an alternative treatment route.

Creso is currently in the process of acquiring Halucenex Life Sciences, which specialises in psychedelic compounds.

Management commentary

Creso’s non-executive Chairman, Adam Blumenthal, commented: “This is a major development for Creso Pharma and Halucenex and provides a key strategy piece, which will underpin our expansion into the US market.”

“Over the recent months, we have made a number of US focused appointments and Halucenex have secured multiple partnerships and agreements that will allow the Company to pursue the US psychedelics market and become a first mover in the sector.”

“The Board and management team are actively assessing a number of strategies to expedite a US market entry and will leverage our existing partnerships and technical experience in the psychedelics space to unlock further value for shareholders,” he concluded.

Despite today’s strong gain, the Creso share price is down a disappointing 22% since this time last month.

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This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced on Wednesday morning that its member-only shopping event, Prime Day, is scheduled for June 21 and June 22 — about a month earlier than usual.

The two-day shopping event will feature “epic deals and the best savings Prime has to offer,” the e-commerce giant said in a press release about the event.

As it’s sure to provide a sales lift for Amazon, investors have good reason to be excited about Prime Day.

Prime Day 2021: The details

Kicking off at 3:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, June 21, Prime Day 2021 will feature more than 2 million deals. These deals, of course, will cover every shopping category, including the company’s own digital services.

The event will take place in “the U.S., the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Spain, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Netherlands, Mexico, Luxembourg, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Brazil, Belgium, Austria, and Australia,” Amazon said.

Not one to miss out on the attention Prime Day brings to its website ahead of the event, Amazon is already rolling out some pre-Prime Day deals.

A major catalyst

Last year, Prime Day was shifted from its typical July time frame to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite economic headwinds, the event still provided a major lift for Amazon. The company said Prime Day 2020 was a record-breaking event, with small and medium businesses on its e-commerce platform seeing a 60% increase in sales from Prime Day 2019. 

Sales of Amazon’s own devices benefited, too. The Echo Dot smart speaker, for instance, was the best-selling item. Overall, “millions” of Alexa-compatible devices were sold during the event.

Good timing

A June debut for this year’s Prime Day is smart scheduling on Amazon’s part. As Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call, the date change means Prime Day won’t overlap with a busy vacation season in July.

But there’s more to it. Moving the shopping event to June will also mean it falls in Q2 instead of Q3. Amazon is up against a tough comparison in the second quarter of 2020 when e-commerce sales surged as many people around the world were simultaneously quarantining at home. Having Prime Day in June will help make Amazon’s Q2 comparison easier.

Despite the tough comparison, Amazon still expects the momentum in its business and Prime Day’s shift to June to lead to sharp year-over-year growth in Q2 sales. Management’s outlook calls for second-quarter revenue to be between $110 billion and $116 billion, up 24% to 30% year over year.

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

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The Pro Medicus Limited (ASX: PME) share price is on the move on Thursday morning following the release of an announcement.

At the time of writing, the health imaging company’s shares are up 1% to $46.75.

This latest gain means the Pro Medicus share price is up 33% since the start of the year.

What did Pro Medicus announce?

This morning Pro Medicus announced that its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, Visage Imaging, has signed a multi-year research collaboration agreement with healthcare giant Mayo Clinic.

According to the release, the agreement will serve as the framework for collaboration between the two parties to facilitate development and commercialisation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), leveraging the Visage AI Accelerator platform.

Visage Imaging’s Global CTO, Malte Westerhoff, PhD, said: “Our AI Accelerator program was designed to closely align Visage’s engineering and product development capability with clinical research partners such as Mayo Clinic who have a depth of clinical knowledge and extensive research expertise.”

“It provides a unique set of tools for data de-identification, collection, curation, analysis and ‘path-to-production’ in research projects bringing the efficiency and speed of Visage technology to research, resulting in a unified link between the two domains,” he added.

Dr Westerhoff believes AI will play a major role in the healthcare sector in the future. This is particularly the case in the imaging IT field, which could benefit from the development of innovative AI solutions.

He concluded: “We see AI playing a significant role in healthcare particularly in our field of imaging IT. We have optimized our Visage 7 platform for AI enabling both our own, as well as third-party algorithms to be seamlessly integrated into the clinician’s desktop. We see this research collaboration agreement with Mayo Clinic as another significant piece of our AI strategy, one that has the potential to develop innovative AI solutions that meet well defined clinical goals and ultimately lead to better patient outcomes.”

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The Mesoblast limited (ASX: MSB) share price is under pressure on Thursday following the release of its third quarter update.

In early trade, the allogeneic cellular medicines company’s shares are down 2.5% to $1.87.

How did Mesoblast perform in the third quarter?

For the three months ended 31 March, Mesoblast reported revenue of US$1.9 million. This was down 84% on the prior corresponding period due to significant one-off milestone revenue a year earlier. This means that year to date revenue now stands at US$5.46 million, down almost 83% on the same period last year.

This ultimately led to Mesoblast reporting a loss after tax of US$26.5 million for the quarter, which brought its financial year to date loss to US$76.75 million.

Fortunately, Mesoblast was able to raise US$110 million via a private placement in March. As a result, it was able to absorb these losses and finished the period with a cash balance of US$158.3 million. Management believes this is sufficient to meet its short-term goals, commitments, and ongoing operations during the next twelve months.

What else happened during the quarter?

Mesoblast was very busy during the quarter with its remestemcel-L therapy. It is seeking to use remestemcel-L to treat steroid-refractory acute graft versus host disease (SR-aGVHD) in children, and COVID-19 ARDS in adults. It is also seeking to gain approval to treat chronic low back pain with rexlemestrocel-L.

In respect to SR-aGVHD in children, Mesoblast continues to be in discussion with the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) through a well-established regulatory process. This may include a resubmission with a six-month review with the aim of achieving approval.

As for COVID-19 ARDS in adults, results from the randomised controlled trial of remestemcel-L in ventilator-dependent COVID19 patients with moderate/severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) indicated that in the pre-specified population under 65 years old (n=123), those who received remestemcel-L had a significantly reduced mortality through to 60 days.

However, the trial was halted after the third interim analysis and 222 enrolled patients since the 30-day primary endpoint would not be attained. Management notes that in patients under 65 years, the benefit was further increased when remestemcel-L was used with dexamethasone as part of standard of care.

The trial also indicated that the mortality reduction by remestemcel-L in those under 65 years was accompanied by increased days alive off mechanical ventilation and reduced days in hospital

Finally, its rexlemestrocel-L trial in the treatment of chronic low back pain indicated that a single injection of rexlemestrocel-L plus a hyaluronic acid carrier may provide at least two years of pain reduction, with opioid sparing activity in patients using opioids at baseline.

Mesoblast’s Chief Executive, Silviu Itescu, commented: “We are pleased with the recent clinical outcomes regarding our lead product candidate remestemcel-L and continue to progress our regulatory discussions with the aim of achieving approval. Our focus and top priority remains on successfully bringing remestemcel-L to children with the devastating complication of steroid-refractory acute graft versus host disease and adults fighting COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome.”

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The Dubber Corp Ltd (ASX: DUB) share price has been a very positive performer on Thursday.

In morning trade, the unified call recording service provider’s shares are up 8.5% to $2.92.

Why is the Dubber share price charging higher?

Investors have been bidding the Dubber share price higher this morning following the release of a positive announcement.

According to the release, Cisco Webex Calling and Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud (UCM) will now include Dubber call recording as part of all Cisco Webex and UCM services at no additional cost to users.

If a user or business requires additional features, such as extended storage, video recording, transcription, sentiment analysis or AI-enriched insights, they can then upgrade their Dubber plan from within Cisco’s Control Hub with immediate access and effect.

The company notes that a major concern for businesses is meeting compliance obligations, regardless of the employee work location. Dubber’s technology can help business users achieve this.

Dubber’s COO, James Slaney, explained: “Business and Government require more than personal call recording. They need conversations to be captured in a way that is compliant and converted to data for revenue intelligence, dispute resolution, proactive compliance and customer service. Today’s announcement is proof not only of the scalability of Dubber, but the potential we and Cisco see in tapping voice data to improve the performance of businesses and governments worldwide.”

Foundation partner

In addition to the above, Cisco will become Dubber’s first major Foundation Partner. The Dubber Foundation Partner Program utilises the scale and native cloud capability of the Dubber platform.

This enables a service provider to embed Dubber within their core service and make basic call recording available for every user as a standard feature. After which, Dubber and its Foundation Partners are then able to cross and upsell richer functionality for compliance, AI services, additional storage, insights and more.

Dubber’s CEO, Steve McGovern, spoke positively about the deal.

He said: “Cisco and Dubber share a common vision of the way that voice data will become a critical resource for all businesses and users in the future. This marks a major milestone in increasing the ubiquity of Dubber as the Unified Call Recording and voice data layer for the world’s leading collaboration platforms.”

The Dubber share price is now up 67% in 2021.

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It’s been a rather successful year for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) so far (touch wood). The ASX 200 has now gained 9.5% year to date and has made a series of fresh new all-time highs, the latest of which was just yesterday. However, not all ASX 200 shares have joined the party. Here’s a look at three of these shares, which are currently down 50% or more in 2021 so far:

A2 Milk Company Ltd (ASX: A2M)

It didn’t take too long for A2 Milk to go from hero to, well, not quite zero, but a definite loser for many ASX 200 investors. In August last year, A2 Milk was at a fresh all-time high of $20.05 per share, having climbed more than 900% over the preceding 4 years. But today, this company is sitting at $5.72, down 71% from those highs. That includes a 50.04% drop in 2021 alone.

The COVID-19 pandemic, a halt in the daigou trade, deteriorating diplomatic relations between China and Australia, and inventory issues have all contributed to a series of earnings guidance downgrades at the company over the past few months. And the results have not been pretty for A2 shareholders. On the bright side, A2 shares are now up by around 11% since mid-May, so perhaps things have turned a corner. We’ll have to wait and see.

Nuix Ltd (ASX: NXL)

Another disappointing ASX 200 share in 2021 so far has been the new kid on the ASX block, Nuix. Nuix made its ASX debut back in December last year. Initially, it was quite a successful initial public offering (IPO), with Nuix shares running up by around 40% during the following 6 weeks to a 52-week high of $11.86, but things were all downhill from there.

At the time of writing, Nuix shares are sitting at $2.69, down by around 67% year to date, and around 80% from February’s highs. The company’s share price also lost 30% in May alone. A series of media reports alleging poor governance and financial disclosure issues appears to be the primary catalyst here. A recent earnings guidance downgrade also didn’t help.

Perenti Global Ltd (ASX: PRN)

Mining services company Perenti is another ASX 200 share that hasn’t had a great start to the year. Perenti shares were trading at $1.41 apiece at the dawn of 2021 but, today, they are going for just 68 cents. That’s a drop of a bit over 50%.

Perenti is another company that has been forced to downgrade its earnings in recent months, much to the chagrin of investors. The company has been hit hard by the pandemic, as well as both a rising Australian dollar and an increased wage bill.

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