While dismissing most claims, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled late Tuesday that shareholders can sue over Chief Executive Tim Cook’s comments touting strong iPhone demand on a Nov. 1, 2018 analyst call, only a few days before Apple told its largest manufacturers to curb production. “Absent some natural disaster or other intervening reason, it is simply implausible that Cook would not have known that iPhone demand in China was falling mere days before cutting production lines,” Rogers wrote.

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(Bloomberg) — Oil turned lower after U.S. government data showed fuel demand isn’t recovering as quickly as first believed.American gasoline supplies rose to the highest level in more than a month and distillate inventories jumped by the most since January 2019, according to the Energy Information Administation. Those increased offset a larger-than-expected decline in crude stockpiles, dragging West Texas Intermediate crude futures down by 1%.Production curbs by OPEC and its allies have helped the market move toward balance, after the massive demand destruction at the height of the virus pandemic in April. But the recovery remains tenuous, with U.S. producers signaling they’re already prepared to re-open wells and oil consumption still soft in most of the world. OPEC+’s commitment to its output-cut deal has also been thrown into question as concerns over cheating prompts Saudi Arabia to propose delaying the alliance’s June meeting.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.

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When OPEC, Russia and their allies agreed in April to slash oil production, little did they expect that their initiative to prop up collapsing prices would be helped by a swift drop in U.S. output. Now that crude has rallied on the back of those cuts from below $20 a barrel to $40 or more, the group known as OPEC+ faces a fresh challenge: stopping U.S. shale production delivering another surprise by recovering equally quickly. “The plan is to stick to prices of $40-$50 per barrel because as soon as they rise any further to say $70 per barrel it encourages too much oil production, including U.S. shale,” said a Russian source familiar with OPEC+ talks on the issue.

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President Donald Trump’s administration said on Wednesday it will bar Chinese passenger carriers from flying to the United States starting on June 16 as it pressures Beijing to allow U.S. air carriers to resume flights. The move, announced by the U.S. Department of Transportation, penalizes China after Beijing failed to comply with an existing agreement on flights between the world’s two largest economies. The order applies to Air China , China Eastern Airlines Corp, China Southern Airlines Co and Hainan Airlines Holding Co .

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(Bloomberg) — A formerly cautious analyst at SVB Leerink has changed his tune on the potential sales of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s Covid-19 treatment, remdesivir.Even bullish Wall Street analysts have been critical of Gilead’s chances of making a profit from the treatment, which received an emergency use designation from U.S. regulators in May. Public advocates have argued against drug and vaccine makers making any profit from the global pandemic but SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges is now forecasting that sales of remdesivir may reach $7.7 billion in 2022.Less than two months ago, Porges had said investors were giving a “generous amount of credit” for a drug that likely won’t be sold for a profit.The latest change is reason enough for Porges to raise his rating on Gilead shares to outperform from market perform, and increase his price target to $94, just $3 shy of the current Street high target. The new target, up from $85 previously, also includes more than $1 billion in sales from potential cancer medicines in a partnership with Arcus Biosciences Inc.“A valuation of $94+ is realistic, perhaps as soon as the company declares its price for commercial sale of remdesivir,” Porges wrote in a note to clients. He expects commercial sales of the drug to be priced at roughly $5,000 per course of treatment in the U.S., and $4,000 in Europe. Gilead, which has said it’s donating 1.5 million vials of the medicine globally, has probably already doled out that supply and will have to announce a price soon, according to the analyst.Clinicians are still awaiting more detailed results from the drug, which has shown a modest benefit in some studies. Meanwhile, biotechnology companies including Moderna Inc. are racing to develop a vaccine. Porges’s view, however, is that “SARS-nCoV2 is not going away, or being eliminated by vaccination.”Gilead shares rose as much as 1.5% in Wednesday trading. The stock has struggled since remdesivir received its authorization, and is down about 8% from May 1.(Updates shares in final 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.

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At the end of February we announced the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we predicted that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each […]

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(Bloomberg) — One Friday evening last December, employees of game designer Star Theory Games each received the same unusual recruitment message over LinkedIn. It struck them as bizarre for two reasons. One, it came from an executive producer at the publishing company funding their next video game. Two, it said the game—in the works for the previous two years—was being pulled from their studio.“This was an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but it became necessary when we felt business circumstances might compromise the development, execution and integrity of the game,” Michael Cook, the executive at Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., wrote in the message, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. “To that end, we encourage you to apply for a position with us.”It was strange and disconcerting news to Star Theory’s employees. Normally, an announcement like this would be delivered in a companywide meeting or an email from Star Theory’s leadership team. The contract with Take-Two was the studio’s only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory’s development staff to make that happen. “We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits,” Cook wrote.When employees returned to the office on Monday, Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor convened an all-hands meeting. The two men had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained. The game’s cancellation was a shock, but the founders assured staff that Star Theory still had money in the bank and could try to sign other deals, according to five people who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified, citing the risk of litigation. Berry and Mavor encouraged employees to stick together and stay at the company.The next few weeks were chaos, employees said. Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory’s staff, including the studio head and creative director. By March, as the coronavirus pandemic choked the global economy, any hope of saving the business appeared to be lost, and Star Theory closed its doors.Even by the cutthroat standards of the video game business, Take-Two’s tactics were extreme. The company behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of America’s largest publishers, with a market value of $15 billion. The stock is up 10% this year and trading near an all-time high, thanks to increased demand from people stuck at home. Take-Two cultivated a leading position in publishing through a mix of big-budget games developed in-house and by a tightknit group of studio partners. Publishers like Take-Two control a project’s financing, marketing and distribution, giving them a great deal of leverage over most developers they sign.The swift demise of Star Theory and the events of its three final months, which have not been previously reported, highlight the frailty of those business relationships and the power dynamics within the industry.Brian Roundy, a spokesman for Take-Two’s Private Division publishing label, said the company contacted “every member of the development team” at Star Theory with an invitation to join the new studio, called Intercept Games. “More than half of the team is now at Intercept Games,” Roundy wrote. “In doing so, we are empowering our deeply passionate and talented team to focus on quality, and we are thrilled with the progress that they are making on the game.” Star Theory’s Berry and Mavor didn’t respond to requests for comment.Patrick Meade, a senior engineer at Star Theory, said he turned down the job offer from Take-Two. He declined to discuss the events in detail but said he didn’t want to work for a big company where he wouldn’t have the same degree of influence or financial benefits if the game were a hit. “I was at a small studio, where the work I did had a massive impact on our success,” Meade said. “When I see myself at any large corporation, that is fundamentally not true.”Berry and Mavor started their game studio in 2008 in Bellevue, Washington. They called it Uber Entertainment, later changing the name to Star Theory following the rise of a certain ride-hailing company. Early hits included Monday Night Combat, a cartoonish shooter that sold more than 300,000 copies, and Planetary Annihilation, a strategy game that raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter.In 2017, Star Theory began working with Take-Two on its most high-profile project. Take-Two had purchased the rights to a popular flight simulation game developed by another independent studio and contracted Star Theory to make a sequel. The original game, Kerbal Space Program, allowed players to construct and launch rockets using realistic physics. It sold more than 2 million copies, was critically acclaimed and even led to partnerships with NASA and the European Space Agency. Gamers, like moviegoers, tend to flock to brands they know, so working on a well-liked franchise is a chance for a studio to increase sales and gain exposure.The view inside Star Theory was that development on Kerbal Space Program 2 was proceeding smoothly, according to the people who worked on the project. A preview of the game on display at the Penny Arcade Expo in September left fans impressed, and Take-Two’s public enthusiasm for the title was rising, said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co.Late last year, Take-Two agreed to extend Star Theory’s development deadline by six months to add new content to the game. That kicked off a new round of contract negotiations. All seemed well, said the people who worked on the game, until Dec. 6, when the project was pulled and the LinkedIn messages went out. At the hastily called staff meeting a few days later, the founders said in addition to sale talks, they had been trying to clarify royalty terms, which were unclear in their contract, they told employees.Three of Star Theory’s leaders—Jeremy Ables, the studio chief; Nate Simpson, the creative director; and Nate Robinson, the lead producer—departed for Take-Two’s new studio immediately. Other staff mulled whether to go, torn between leaving and abandoning their colleagues or staying and risking their livelihoods, they said. One employee, who asked not to be identified, said they felt a mix of confusion and fury, adding that they’d never been put in this type of position.The attempt at hiring away the development team came with business risks, both for the project and for Take-Two if word got out, said Creutz. “They've got a game they've got high hopes for, and they have now potentially injected an enormous amount of disruption into the development process,” he said. “You could be taking a reputational risk as well, if you want other studios to work with you and it appears that you play this kind of move when things don't go the way you want.”About a dozen of Star Theory’s 30 employees wound up leaving for Take-Two’s new studio, while the rest stuck around in an attempt to save the business, they said. By January, the remaining team had a plan in place: Each employee would spend the next two months brainstorming new ideas and building prototypes. Then they would pitch the best ones to publishers at the Game Developers Conference in mid-March in the hope of securing a new deal, the five workers said. The annual conference is always full of publishers looking to make investments in indie studios with proven track records.Then came the pandemic. The conference was canceled, leaving Star Theory with nowhere to take its pitches. Publishers, sensing an economic downturn, tightened their spending. On March 4, Star Theory shut down. Each worker received a month’s pay and two months of health insurance, said three former employees. A few joined their former colleagues at Take-Two’s Intercept Games.Kerbal Space Program 2 remains in development at Intercept. The game had been set to come out this year, but the company said last month it was delaying the release until the fall of 2021. “With everything going on in the world today due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” the company said, “we’re facing many unique challenges.”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.

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(Bloomberg) — Investors could face more name confusion this week when ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. joins Zoom Video Communications Inc. on the Nasdaq Stock Market.ZoomInfo, which provides data on sales prospects, is expected to price its initial public offering on June 3 and begin trading under the ticker symbol ZI the following day. It will join three other publicly traded companies globally whose names begin with Zoom, the most well-known of which is the maker of video-conferencing software that has become a household name during the coronavirus pandemic.The surging popularity of Zoom Video, used daily by millions of people for remote face-to-face interactions, has fueled a three-fold rally in its stock this year. But for a brief time, it caused even bigger spikes in the shares of Zoom Technologies Inc, a Beijing-based company with few operations to speak of. That stock traded under the symbol ZOOM and had been moribund for years before Zoom Video’s IPO in April 2019 helped revive it.”The challenging part is we’re just running out of names that are distinctive,” said A.J. Ericksen, corporate partner at Baker Botts, in an interview. “So you’ll get some that sound alike and it gets even worse when you start with tickers — which was a big problem with Zoom Technologies. The retail investors start typing in ‘Zoom’ and get that.”ZOOM’s daily volume soared from about 30,000 shares on April 10, 2019, to nearly 1 million shares eight days later, while the stock price rose about five-fold over three trading days. Things were quieter until the coronavirus started to spread rapidly across the U.S. this spring, sparking a surge in Zoom video chats and sending shares of its doppelganger up more than 10-fold.That volatility captured the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which halted trading in Zoom Technologies for two weeks on March 25. The regulator cited concerns about ticker confusion and a lack of public disclosures since 2015. Ultimately Zoom Technologies changed its ticker symbol from ZOOM to ZTNO.“I think it’s just going to be left to ‘buyer beware,’” Ericksen said.Of course, ZoomInfo has little in common with Zoom Technologies aside from its name. The Vancouver, Washington-based company has about 202,000 paying users, $293 million in revenue last year and is backed by Carlyle Group, according to a filing.It’s unclear whether Zoom Corp., a Japanese seller of video and sound recording devices, has also benefited from name confusion. Its stock rallied to a four-month high in April but has since fallen about 14%.Meanwhile, Zoom Video shares continue to chug higher. The stock has gained 27% since Friday, when it was added to the MSCI World Index. On Tuesday, the company nearly doubled its annual revenue forecast after a blowout first quarter in which customers with more than 10 employees jumped 354% compared with the same period a year ago.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.

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German travel operator TUI and Boeing Co (BA) have reached an agreement on a comprehensive package of measures to offset the financial impact of the grounding of the planemaker’s 737 MAX jets.The two-year compensation package includes a new delivery schedule for the 737 MAX aircraft of which the travel company had an order of 61. As a result, less than half of the originally planned 737 MAX aircraft will be delivered to TUI in the next two years with the timing also being delayed.The associated payment schedules have been adapted accordingly, TUI said in a statement. The financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed as its details are confidential. However, TUI said that the compensation deal covers a “significant portion of the financial impact, as well as credits for future aircraft orders”."We have reached a fair agreement that strengthens our long-standing relationship with Boeing,” TUI CEO Fritz Joussen said. “It supports our plan to downsize the aircraft fleet and reduce the capital requirements for aircraft investments in the Group."With its five airlines in Germany, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, TUI is one of Boeing's largest European customers for the 737 aircraft. Temporary suspension of aircraft production had begun in January after the company grounded the 737 MAX jet last year following a second crash.The ailing planemaker said last week it restarted 737 MAX production at its factory in Renton, Washington, albeit at a low rate and is planning to gradually ramp up production this year.Boeing has been cutting jobs and streamlining operations as travel restrictions tied to the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in a deep cut in the number of commercial jets and services its customers need over the next few years. Last month, the planemaker reported that it did not receive a single order in April, while it was also grappling with 108 order cancelations for its grounded 737 MAX plane.Shares advanced 1.5% to $155.60 in Wednesday’s pre-market trading, trimming this year’s plunge to 53%.Susquehanna analyst Charles Minervino this week reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a $175 price target, as he believes that a steady recovery in air travel off the lows seen in 2Q should lift demand for aftermarket services in the coming quarters.Overall Wall Street analysts are cautiously optimistic on Boeing shares. The Moderate Buy consensus is divided into 8 Buy, 11 Hold and 1 Sell rating. The $161.61 average price target implies 5.4% upside potential in the stock in the next 12 months. (See Boeing’s stock analysis on TipRanks).Related News: Boeing Cuts 6,770 Jobs In U.S.; CFRA Upgrades Stock To Buy   Ryanair Cuts Traffic Target By Almost 50% For Coming Year, Seeks To Reduce Boeing Plane Deliveries Boeing Gets No Orders in April, Customers Cancel 737 MAX Jets More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * Facebook And PayPal Invest In Indonesian App Gojek * Google In $5 Billion U.S. Lawsuit For Collecting Users’ ‘Private’ Internet Data    * Alibaba Rolls Out Online Business Services As Covid-19 Boosts Digitalization Need * Glu Mobile Sinks On $100M Public Offering Announcement

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