The European Union is negotiating advance purchase deals of potential COVID-19 vaccines with drugmakers Moderna, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson and biotech firms BioNtech and CureVac, two EU sources told Reuters. The talks follow a deal reached in June by four EU states with AstraZeneca for the upfront purchase of 400 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine, in principle available to all 27 EU nations.

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(Bloomberg Opinion) — Tesla Inc.’s march to a $275 billion market capitalization has been pretty galling for Germany, the birthplace of the automobile. But the pain is felt most acutely at Daimler AG, which used to be a large Tesla shareholder.Had the owner of the luxury Mercedes-Benz brand kept hold of the almost 5 million shares it offloaded in 2014, they would now be worth about $7.3 billion by my calculation — a sum that’s equivalent to two-thirds of Daimler’s current net industrial cash position.(1)In the annals of ill-timed investment decisions, that stake sale doesn’t quite match the U.K.’s flogging off a big chunk of its gold reserves when prices bottomed out around the turn of the millennium. It still hurts, particularly at a time when industrial companies are counting every last cent.Fortunately there’s some good news to console Daimler’s long suffering shareholders. The company’s performance in the most recent quarter was a lot better than expected. Instead of burning a large amount of cash, Daimler’s industrial business recorded an almost 700 million-euro ($799 million) inflow during the three-month period. The quarterly operating loss of 1.7 billion euros was also a pretty respectable outcome, considering the pandemic forced the temporary closure of both factories and dealerships.The shares rose on Friday, extending the stock’s rally since its March low to almost 80%. While not Tesla-esque, that’s still pretty racy. Unfortunately, this resilient showing may make the task of restructuring Daimler that much harder.But first, what’s gone right? A recession would normally be devastating for auto sales. However, a pandemic changes the dynamic somewhat: Having a car is pretty helpful if you worry taking public transport might endanger your health.Mercedes’s car sales declined about a fifth in the first half of the year, but in June they were actually higher than the same month a year ago. The brand’s performance in China, where the pandemic seems to have been brought under control, was especially good. It helps too that the jobs of Mercedes’s customers – wealthy white collar workers – probably aren’t as threatened by the pandemic as other parts of the economy.That doesn’t mean Daimler is in the clear. The company’s margins had already deteriorated before the novel coronavirus appeared. Legal troubles involving dirty diesel engines contributed to a string of profit warnings, but the overarching problem was the massive cost of investing in cleaner propulsion technology, and that hasn’t gone away. At the same time, Daimler’s large production and staffing footprint in high-cost Germany and high level of vertical integration (it produces lots of parts itself rather than outsourcing the work) has become unsustainable.New Chief Executive Officer Ola Kallenius wants to trim the workforce by 15,000 positions, but the additional headwinds created by the pandemic may mean that number has to rise. Talks with trade unions have begun but unsurprisingly, they’re not going smoothly.The risk is that Daimler’s decent second-quarter performance lessens the urgency for change. Generating positive cash flow is also unhelpful from a political perspective: While Germany has boosted subsidies for low-cost electric vehicles and cut sales taxes, domestic carmakers have received remarkably little support from their government during this crisis.So Daimler still has plenty of work to do. It’s embarrassing that the world’s largest premium automaker and biggest truck maker is valued at barely 40 billion euros. Considering how Mercedes focuses on the premium end of the market, the car unit should be far more profitable than it is.Yes, Daimler should have moved faster to develop electric vehicles. But it’s not the dinosaur it’s sometimes characterized as. The EQS electric saloon set to go on sale in 2021 promises to cover more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) on a single charge, which might convince even the most range-anxious car buyers to abandon their addiction to combustion engines. The truck unit too is targeting a carbon-neutral fleet in key regions by 2039. In view of previous setbacks, Daimler’s shareholders will take more convincing before they believe in this recovery story and get over the disappointment of missing out on the Tesla rally. (1) Daimler acquired a 9% stake in Tesla in 2009 for the trifling sum of $50 million. The Germans quickly offloaded part of their stake, they got diluted when Tesla raised capital and sold the remaining 4% stake in 2014 for $780 million.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies. He previously worked for the Financial Times.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.

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Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) shareholders will doubtless be very grateful to see the share price up 41…

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(Bloomberg) — Less than a month after emerging from bankruptcy triggered by a string of devastating wildfires in 2017 and 2018, PG&E Corp. has now been found responsible for California’s biggest blaze of 2019.The California energy giant’s power lines sparked the Kincade fire which burned 77,758 acres and destroyed 374 structures in Sonoma County wine country, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Thursday.Investigators have sent a report on the incident to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, only a month after PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for a 2018 conflagration that was the most deadly in state history.Brandon Gilbert, an assistant to Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch, said his office recently received the reports and will start reviewing them. PG&E said it doesn’t have access to Cal Fire’s report or the evidence it collected.“We look forward to reviewing both at the appropriate time,” PG&E said in a statement.Long SuspectedPG&E’s equipment was long suspected of causing the Kincade fire that started on Oct. 23, as the utility had reported that one of its transmission lines malfunctioned near the location and time of the start of the blaze. The company said in May that it could book a loss of at least $600 million stemming from damages tied to the wildfire.The Kincade fire likely won’t cause the same kind of financial trouble for PG&E as the string of catastrophic blazes in 2017 and 2018 that were blamed on its equipment and pushed it into bankruptcy more than a year ago. PG&E estimated liabilities from those fires at $30 billion. The company emerged from Chapter 11 at the start of this month after having settled claims from the earlier fires for $25.5 billion. The Kincade blaze wasn’t included in the bankruptcy settlement with victims.Cal Fire’s finding is certain to be of interest to the federal judge overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation stemming from a 2010 gas line explosion in San Bruno.LawsuitsU.S. District Judge William Alsup has threatened to impose deep and expensive changes to PG&E’s operations based on its involuntary manslaughter plea following the investigation of the origin of the Camp fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise. The prosecution was led by Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who concluded that blaze was due to PG&E’s negligence, which he also tied to the Kincade fire.Even before Cal Fire’s report, PG&E faced lawsuits over Kincade. One of the suits, filed July 8 in Sonoma County Superior Court, was filed on behalf of a golf course, vineyards and a hotel damaged in the fire. The suit blames PG&E’s culture as the cause, claiming it failed to maintain aging equipment despite knowing it was unsafe.The fire started after PG&E had shut down other power lines in the area during windy and dry conditions. The measure was part of a number of intentional blackouts carried out by PG&E in October designed to keep its equipment from sparking another calamitous blaze.Mike Danko, a lawyer representing victims of the Camp fire in Paradise, California, in which PG&E pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, said Cal Fire’s report was unsurprising. Danko is representing a number of individuals and businesses who lost property from the Kincade fire.“We knew that, just like the Camp fire, PG&E should have turned the transmission lines off, but didn’t,” he said, referring to the Kincade blaze. “The only question is, given what happened in Paradise, why did PG&E leave the transmission lines energized? Did it learn nothing at all?”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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Daimler will stop building Mercedes-Benz sedans in the United States and Mexico as it seeks deeper cuts after posting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss. The German automaker will halt output of its Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedan in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, leaving the plant producing sport utility vehicles (SUVs) only, it said. “Daimler pre-released better-than-consensus second-quarter numbers,” Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois said in a note.

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When close to half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") below 16x, you may…

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How do you pick the next stock to invest in? One way would be to spend days of research browsing through thousands of publicly traded companies. However, an easier way is to look at the stocks that smart money investors are collectively bullish on. Hedge funds and other institutional investors usually invest large amounts of […]

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The shares of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NYSE: NCLH), Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL), and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (NYSE: RCL) continued to dip in the after-hours session Thursday, as the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention extended its ban on cruise sailing in the United States.What Happened In an order Thursday, the CDC extended the suspension of "passenger operations on cruise ships with the capacity to carry at least 250 passengers in waters" through September 15."If unrestricted cruise ship passenger operations were permitted to resume, passengers and crew on board would be at increased risk of COVID-19 infection and those that work or travel on cruise ships would place substantial unnecessary risk on healthcare workers, port personnel and federal partners, and the communities they return to," the federal agency said in a statement.According to the CDC data between March and July, there have been 2,973 coronavirus or coronavirus-like illnesses on cruise ships since March, including 34 deaths.Why It Matters Cruise companies have been voluntarily delaying resuming their operations as well, with the risk of coronavirus spread remaining especially high in contained spaces.Norwegian announced last month it was suspending its voyages through October, and rival Carnival has also suspended its operations through mid-September at least.Miami-based Norwegian earlier in the day said it intended to raise $925 million via debt offerings and $250 million via stock offerings, as it looks to keep the business afloat during the pandemic.Price Action Carnival shares traded 1% lower in the after-hours session at $15.78 on Thursday, after closing the regular session 9.7% lower at $15.78.Royal Caribbean was down 0.4% at $53.94. It had closed the regular session 7.6% lower at $53.94.Norwegian dropped 0.7% further from the 15.6% lower close at $15.61 in the regular session.See more from Benzinga * iPhone Chipmaker TSMC Reports Massive Earnings Beat In Q2 * Biohaven Pharmaceutical's Migraine Drug To Be Promoted by Khloe Kardashian * GoHealth Shares Drop 9% On Day One Trading After 3M IPO(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Vaccine-focused biopharma Dynavax Technologies (DVAX) has announced a collaboration to develop a universal influenza (flu) vaccine with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.Mount Sinai’s work in this area is funded under a contract award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as part of the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) program.The Mount Sinai CIVICs team will evaluate a novel approach they have developed called chimeric hemagglutinin (cHA) designed to protect against all strains of influenza in combination with Dynavax’s CpG 1018TM adjuvant.Adjuvants are added to a vaccine to boost the immune response to produce more antibodies and longer-lasting immunity, thus minimizing the dose of antigen needed. They can also enhance vaccine efficacy by helping to modify the immune response by particular types of immune system cells.The development program will support an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for Phase I clinical trials.There are no approved universal flu vaccines. The effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccine ranges between 10% and 60%. A universal vaccine could eliminate the need to update and administer the seasonal flu vaccine annually and could protect against newly emerging flu strains, potentially including those that could cause a flu pandemic.Seasonal influenza epidemics, caused by influenza A and B viruses, result in 3–5 million severe cases and 300 000–500 000 deaths globally each year.“We are focused on designing novel vaccine candidates and delivery platforms with an emphasis on cross-protective vaccine strategies that could be used in healthy adults as well as populations at high risk for the most serious outcomes of influenza,” said Peter Palese, of Mount Sinai. “Including CpG 1018 in these vaccines gives us an important tool to potentially improve the immune response, especially in populations that need it most like the elderly.”Shares in Dynavax have surged 66% year-to-date, and all four analysts covering the stock rate it a buy. The Strong Buy analyst consensus comes with a $15 average analyst price target (62% upside potential).“We remind investors that Dynavax currently has partnerships in place with five different companies developing COVID-19 vaccines that utilize Dynavax’s CpG 1018 adjuvant” commented HC Wainwright analyst Edward White on July 16.“We include no value at this time for the influenza vaccine or the COVID-19 vaccines, but we expect to add potential value for them to our price target once we see clinical data” he adds. White’s buy rating comes with a $12 price target. (See DVAX stock analysis on TipRanks).Related News: Johnson & Johnson Tops Q2 Estimates; Raises 2020 Guidance Boston Scientific Mulls Billion-Dollar Snake Venom Sale- Report Becton, Dickinson Score Fed Contract For Covid-19 Rapid Test Systems More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * Norwegian Cruise Sets $15 Offering Price, As Downgrades Sweep Stock * LendingTree Boosts Q2 Guidance; Analysts Raise Price Targets * Netflix Sinks 9% On Weak Q2 Earnings; Subdued Guidance * Amazon Launches Brand-Streaming Product Using Twitch Technology

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(Bloomberg) — SoftBank Group Corp. quietly sold an additional $2.2 billion of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as part of the Japanese conglomerate’s fund-raising effort to pay down debt and buy back its own shares.The deal, which includes a collar contract and call spread, is expected to be settled between May 2024 and June 2024. The details were disclosed on page 276 of SoftBank’s year-end financial filing released on June 25, but have not been previously reported. A SoftBank Group spokesman confirmed the details of the sale.This step is the latest in an unwinding of a relationship between the two companies that spans two decades. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son was an early backer of Jack Ma’s Alibaba and the Chinese e-commerce giant remains his most successful investment by far. In early 2000, Son invested $20 million into the then-unknown web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers, a stake that is now worth more than $150 billion. Son and Ma stepped down from each other’s boards last month.The deal brings the total of Alibaba stock sold by the Tokyo-based company this year to $13.7 billion. SoftBank in May said that it entered into several prepaid forward contracts with banks in April and May using Alibaba shares to procure a total of $11.5 billion. That includes a $1.5 billion forward contract with settlement in April 2024, a $1.5 billion floor contract with settlement in Dec. 2023 and Jan. 2024, and a $8.5 billion collar contract with settlement from Jan. to Sept. 2022.SoftBank is in the process of offloading 4.5 trillion yen ($42 billion) of assets to bankroll stock buybacks and slash debt to reassure investors after a swoon in its shares earlier this year. In addition to Alibaba, the company is selling a stake in T-Mobile US Inc. for as much as $20 billion and stock in its domestic telecom unit.SoftBank shares have recovered as the company has sold assets and bought back stock. The stock has climbed about 140% from their low in March and hit the highest level in two decades this month.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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