(Bloomberg) — Novavax Inc., one of the front-runners in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, will receive $1.6 billion from the U.S. government, the biggest contribution yet from the Operation Warp Speed program.The funds will allow the company to conduct advanced human studies and establish manufacturing to deliver 100 million doses as soon as late 2020, Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Novavax said in a statement.Shares of Novavax rose as much as 41%, the highest since September 2016, in Tuesday trading.Novavax is among companies striving to develop an inoculation against the novel coronavirus that’s spreading quickly in countries including the U.S., India and Mexico. President Donald Trump’s Warp Speed program has backed efforts at a number of companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc, to get doses as early as possible.Operation Warp Speed seeks to compress a process that is typically years long into a matter of months. The drive is being led by General Gustave Perna, who directs the U.S. Army Materiel Command, and former GlaxoSmithKline Plc executive Moncef Slaoui.Spike ProteinThe funds will help Novavax begin a final-stage study of its vaccine candidate as early as this fall, with as many as 30,000 subjects, according to the statement.The biotech company earlier secured as much as $388 million in May from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the single largest contribution from the organization at the time. The company’s vaccine candidate is meant to provoke the production of antibodies that block the “spike” protein the coronavirus uses to infect host cells.Separately, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. secured a $450 million award from the program under the auspices of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA. The Tarrytown, N.Y.-based company will use the funds to scale up production of an antibody cocktail to prevent infection.Analysts are expecting results from Regeneron’s antibody program sometime in the third quarter. Novavax, which has yet to commercialize a medicine or vaccine, plans to report a first look at its results in patients later this month.Drug companies and university researchers are investigating more than 140 experimental inoculations, according to the World Health Organization. Moderna, Pfizer and the University of Oxford, working with AstraZeneca, are among the companies and institutions that have started studies of their vaccines in healthy patients.(Updates shares in third paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/3f9Hb8V

Corvus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CRVS) shares shot up 115% on Tuesday after the clinical-stage biopharma company said that it has initiated a Phase 1 study to investigate a novel immunotherapy approach for patients with COVID-19.The stock surged to $5.85 in early morning trading. Novavax reported that the first cohort of 5 patients enrolled in the study was treated at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. The initiation follows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) review and approval of the company’s investigational new drug (IND) application for the COVID-19 study. The trial will evaluate anti-viral antibody response in up to 30 COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms.Corvus is studying an agonistic (immunostimulatory) humanized monoclonal antibody, CPI-006, which has demonstrated a potential new approach to immunotherapy of infectious diseases and cancer. In both in vitro and in vivo studies in cancer patients, CPI-006 has demonstrated binding to various immune cells and the inducement of a humoral adaptive immune response leading to the production of antigen-specific immunoglobulin antibodies. The use of CPI-006 has also led to increased levels of memory B cells, which are the cells responsible for long-term immunity.Corvus reported that a similar production of antibodies and memory cells to pathogens such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may provide immediate and long-term clinical benefits for patients including shortened recovery time and improved long-term protective immunity.“Our monoclonal antibody may be a potential immunotherapy for COVID-19 based on its ability to stimulate the production of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies,” said Corvus CEO Richard A. Miller. “We believe that COVID-19 patients treated with CPI-006 may benefit from an improved time to recovery and building longer term immunity. We believe this opens an entirely new area of investigation and opportunities to both treat and prevent serious infectious diseases.”Miller added that the COVID-19 study broadens the company’s pipeline as it continues to advance its core cancer programs with ciforadenant and CPI-006, while remaining on track to provide data updates at medical meetings later this year.Shares in Corvus have slumped 50% year-to-date as of yesterday with the $7.33 average price target set by analysts implying shares are poised to gain 33% over the coming year. (See Corvus stock analysis on TipRanks)Mizuho Securities analyst Mara Goldstein, who has a Buy rating on the stock with a $7 price target, says she likes the shares “based on the view that data can reset the valuation, and the 1Q20 update call identified progress that could lead to this in 2020.”The rest of the Street is also bullish on the stock assigning only Buy ratings adding up to a Strong Buy consensus.     Related News: Novavax Spikes 42% Pre-Market On $1.6B U.S. Funding For Covid-19 Candidate Cellectis Sinks 13% In Extended Trading After FDA Halts Cancer Clinical Trial Chembio Gains 12% After-Hours On New Covid-19 BARDA Contract More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * Novavax Spikes 42% Pre-Market On $1.6B U.S. Funding For Covid-19 Candidate * Microsoft Mulls Acquisition of Warner Bros.’ Gaming Unit – Report * Microsoft To Reveal New Games Lineup With Xbox Series X Event This Month  * Otonomy Pops 15% in Pre-Market Fueled By Otividex Data, Positive Results From Tinnitus Candidate

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/3iE7TZz

Dexcom broke past a 415.59 cup-with-handle buy point after recently rebounding from its 50-day/10-week line. RS line not yet at highs but follows strong prior uptrend.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2Z5qyFZ

We know that hedge funds generate strong, risk-adjusted returns over the long run, which is why imitating the picks that they are collectively bullish on can be a profitable strategy for retail investors. With billions of dollars in assets, professional investors have to conduct complex analyses, spend many resources and use tools that are not […]

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2ZztppC

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds' and successful investors' positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund's trades on numerous financial […]

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2Z6poKg

Taking the occasional loss comes part and parcel with investing on the stock market. And there's no doubt that Air…

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2ZKYLtl

Investors of MEI Pharma (MEIP) trudged off to the 4th of July celebrations in a downbeat mood. In last week’s final session, shares declined by 18.5%.The announcement that MEI and its collaboration partner, the Helsinn Group, prematurely ended a Phase 3 trial of pracinostat in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was to blame for the sell-off. Interim data showed that the candidate’s use most likely won’t lead to better overall survival rates for AML patients.While the news was greeted by surprise at investment firm BTIG, the trial’s abrupt ending does not overly concern company analyst Thomas Shrader.Contributing only 6% to the 5-star analyst’s model for the biotech, Shrader has another reason “patients and investors should care.” This reason is MEI’s potential treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma (FL), which is currently in a Phase 2 trial.With the trial ongoing and expected to be fully enrolled by 1H21, Shrader’s base case involves the approval of ME-401 for FL in 2021. While MEI-401 is a PI3 delta inhibitor and belongs to a class of drugs that has been considered risky in the past, recent data supports Shrader’s bullish thesis.“Overall, we see ME-401 in a good place in the B-Cell malignancy landscape with a very powerful PI3K inhibitor they have learned to dose safely at a time when powerful drugs are increasingly viewed favorably in earlier lines. The drug's non-overlapping safety profile with other's in the overall B-Cell malignancy arena (BTK and MDM-2 inhibitors) also suggests combinations are more likely to have acceptable safety profiles… We still like the story, and we are raising our probability of success (POS) for ME-401 in FL to 75% from 60% based on recent data,” Shrader explained.To this end, Shrader maintained a Buy rating along with a $5.50 price target. Investors could be taking home a 64% gain, should Shrader’s thesis play out over the coming months. (To watch Shrader’s track record, click here)The rest of the Street backs up the BTIG analyst’s call. All 6 analysts tracked over the past three months rate MEI a Buy. With an average price target of $9.75, there’s massive upside potential of 185% in the year ahead. (See MEI Pharma stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for biotech stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * 3 Coronavirus Penny Stocks With Triple-Digit Upside Potential * The Rise of E-Commerce and Cloud Services Positions Amazon (AMZN) for the Win * Facebook Faces More Ad Boycotts, But This Analyst Expects Minimal Impact * 3 "Strong Buy" Penny Stocks With Explosive Upside Ahead

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2ZGkDGm

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Transparency and public trust are essential to effective bank regulation. These guiding principles were severely compromised in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Instead of simple, straightforward metrics of bank solvency, capital requirements became an exercise in gamesmanship. Regulators deferred to banks’ own opaque and incomprehensible models of risk to determine how much capital they needed, deeming them “well-capitalized” when the banks were anything but. Reforms adopted after the crisis wisely added simpler, objective capital standards, complemented by stress tests that publicize whether large banks have sufficient capacity to weather severe economic conditions.Unfortunately, last month’s confusing and vague pronouncements by the Federal Reserve of this year’s stress test results undermined those principles. Instead of reassuring the public, they have created more uncertainty as to the strength of the banking system.Much criticism has centered on the failure of the Fed to publish bank-specific results under its “enhanced sensitivity analysis,” which took into account worsening economic scenarios caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The stress scenarios the Fed had announced in February were not as severe as the path the economy is on now. But the Fed only published bank-specific results under February’s now essentially irrelevant assumptions.Less noticed, but we feel equally important, was the failure of the Fed to publish an enhanced sensitivity analysis using a simpler, more reliable measure of financial strength called the leverage ratio. Instead, the Fed relied solely on banks’ “risk-based ratios,” which seek to measure capital adequacy in relation to judgments about the riskiness of banks’ assets. Risk-based ratios failed spectacularly in the lead up to the financial crisis as large banks took huge, highly leveraged stakes in securities and derivatives tied to mortgages because they and their regulators deemed those assets low risk.After the crisis, global consensus emerged that regulators should backstop risk-based capital rules with leverage ratios, which proved to be more reliable indicators of solvency during the financial crisis. For the largest banks, these supplemental leverage ratios require a minimum of 5% equity funding for the banking organization, and 6% for subsidiaries insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.A review of the bank-specific results published by the Fed using February’s pre-pandemic assumptions shows that some large banks would be operating with thin capital margins even under those more benign scenarios. For instance, Goldman Sachs’s supplemental leverage ratio dipped as low as 3.5%; Morgan Stanley, 4.5%; JPMorgan Chase, 5.1%. Unfortunately, we don’t know how these and other large banks will fare under the more-distressed conditions caused by the pandemic. The Fed’s enhanced sensitivity assessment only disclosed aggregate risk-based ratios. These ranged from 9.5% for a “V-shaped” recovery to 7.7% for a more severe “W,” with the bottom 25th percentile of banks going as low as 4.8% in a “W” scenario. Leverage ratios are typically less than half of banks’ risk-based measures. Indeed, a major concern about risk-based ratios is that they imply capital levels greater than they actually are. Thus, it is likely there were a number of banks with stress leverage ratios below 3% in the Fed’s sensitivity analysis, far too thin to keep them lending and solvent without government support.The failure to disclose leverage ratios in the pandemic sensitivity analysis is consistent with the Fed’s rulemaking in March to eliminate leverage requirements from their stress tests. Unfortunately, it is not the only step regulators have taken to marginalize leverage ratios. They have also allowed large banks to remove “safe assets” such as Treasury securities and reserve deposits from the supplemental leverage ratios calculation. But the relatively low requirements were calibrated based on the assumption that they would apply to all of a banks’ assets, including safe assets as well as risky exposures such as uncleared derivatives and leveraged loans. Removing safe assets without raising the required ratio will eventually lead to significant reductions in capital minimums, according to regulators’ estimates: $76 billion for banking organizations and more than $55 billion for their insured subsidiaries.Regulators have said this step was necessary to “support credit to households and businesses.” But this is hard to reconcile with their refusal to request suspension of bank dividend payments. (They did finally impose a modest cap, which will still permit most banks to continue paying dividends at their first quarter levels.) Retaining that capital would give banks the ability to expand support for the real economy without weakening their capital position. FDIC-insured banks paid $30 billion in dividends to their holding companies in the first quarter. If that $30 billion had stayed on banks’ balance sheets, it could have supported nearly a half trillion dollars in additional capacity to take new deposits and make loans.Moreover, we challenge whether this change will further its stated goal to increase Main Street lending. It will instead create incentives to reduce lending. A number of banks will most likely need to improve their capital ratios as a result of the Fed’s continued stress assessments. But to do so, they can simply cut back on loans, which have relatively high risk-based capital requirements, and shift into U.S. Treasuries, which now have no capital requirements. They will be able to boost their risk-based ratios without having to curb dividends or issue new equity.Regulators have said removing Treasury securities and reserve deposits from the leverage ratio calculation is temporary, but bank lobbyists are expected to seek legislation making it permanent as part of the next stimulus package. Banking advocates are also pushing regulators to finalize pending changes to the supplemental leverage ratios which would reduce required capital at the eight largest FDIC-insured banks by $121 billion, or 20% on average. If the banking lobby is successful, we fear there won’t be much left of meaningful leverage restrictions.Bank capital funding requirements are not unnecessary red tape as bank lobbyists try to portray them. They are essential to financial stability. Studies show that highly capitalized banks do a better job of lending than highly leveraged ones, especially during economic stress. The previous financial crisis demonstrated how unreliable risk-based ratios can be and the need to backstop them with overarching leverage constraints on large financial institutions. Greater reliance on simpler, transparent leverage ratios was central to regaining public trust in the solvency and resilience of the banking system. Their demise will force the public to rely on the Fed’s and big banks’ complex and nontransparent risk models. Bank capital levels will once again become an insiders’ game.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Sheila Bair was chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2006 to 2011.Thomas Hoenig was vice chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2012 to 2018.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/3f9n8r5

(Bloomberg) — Sunrun Inc., America’s biggest rooftop-solar company, is set to become a behemoth through a $1.46 billion takeover of its rival Vivint Solar Inc. Shares of both companies surged.The agreement announced late Monday is one of the industry’s biggest. It comes after Tesla Inc.’s 2016 purchase of debt-plagued SolarCity Corp. and the failed 2015 acquisition of Vivint by SunEdison Inc., the clean-energy giant that went bankrupt soon after.The second major U.S. energy deal in as many days — following Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s $4 billion purchase of Dominion Energy Inc. assets — also threatens to further weaken Tesla’s grip on the rooftop-solar market and could inspire more sector consolidation. Sunrun and Vivint combined provide about 75% of new residential solar leases each quarter, according to BloombergNEF.“Sunrun will be freaking big,” Joe Osha, an analyst at JMP Securities, said in an interview. “They are clearly looking for ways to get scale and efficiency.”Sunrun shares rose 16% at 9:44 a.m. in New York. Vivint climbed 29%.The deal, subject to approvals, values Blackstone Group Inc.-backed Vivint at $3.2 billion including debt. It comes as America’s rooftop-solar industry works its way back from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. Door-to-door sales — a key marketing strategy for installers — practically ceased as states imposed lockdowns, while installations were slowed or canceled.“Now was a perfect time because we have been through the Covid test,” Sunrun Chief Executive Officer Lynn Jurich said on a conference call Tuesday.There’s evidence that the sector may be rebounding. Investor enthusiasm for rooftop-solar equities has surged after March lows, companies have lined up financings in recent weeks, and there have been efforts to ramp up the digitization of operations.Amid the pandemic, rooftop solar “could be an industry that picks up faster than others,” Hugh Bromley, an analyst at BNEF, said in an interview. “People are staying home thinking about renovations and they’re seeing their power bills increase while they’re running the air conditioner around the clock.”Rooftop KingSunrun has been America’s largest rooftop-solar company for more than two years, edging aside Tesla, which had inherited the throne from longtime king SolarCity. Tesla’s market-share has shrunk since the acquisition amid strategic shifts and competition from rooftop rivals including Sunnova Energy International Inc. and SunPower Corp.New leases and power-purchase agreements represented about 27% of American residential-solar systems prior to the pandemic. Marketing is usually the biggest expense for American installers, and the companies said in a statement Monday that the deal will create $90 million in annual “cost synergies.”The acquisition, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, is an all-stock transaction, under which each share of Vivint will be exchanged for 0.55 shares of Sunrun. The combined company would have an enterprise value of $9.2 billion, they said Monday.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/3eeuBEl

United’s reservations for travel within the coming month quickly began to slide after New York, New Jersey and Connecticut said last month they would require people arriving from hot-spot states to quarantine for 14 days, the report said. The slump was most pronounced at United’s Newark hub, where near-term net bookings were just about 16% of year-ago levels as of July 1, the Journal said. Earlier this month, United said it was adding nearly 25,000 domestic and international flights in August, tripling the number it flew in June, while standing ready to shift plans if recent spikes in COVID-19 cases hurt demand.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2VP6llJ