Category: Barrons

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and other regulators finalized an overhaul of the so-called Volcker rule, imposed under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. It was meant to prevent banks from engaging in some of the risky behavior that contributed to the crisis, such as proprietary trading and making speculative, hedge fund-like investments.

The Labor Department said Thursday that seasonally adjusted jobless claims were 1.5 million in the week ended June 20, little changed from the previous week’s level. Economists polled by FactSet expected a decline to 1.325 million.

The 15.8% jump to $194.4 billion in goods reversed April’s plunge of 18.1 percent, which was revised even further downward in the May report. An 80.7% jump in transportation equipment orders to $46.9 billion led the index’s overall increase, ending two months of declines in the sector as plane maker Boeing and the Detroit car makers resumed production after shutting down due to the coronavirus.

It comes shortly after ex-CEO Markus Braun was detained before being freed on bail. He stands accused of market manipulation and falsifying the company’s accounts, in what is becoming one of Germany’s biggest financial scandals.

The struggling retailer says the job cuts are part of a restructuring that it expects to save $365 million in costs this year and $630 million of costs annually. The layoffs will be associated with $180 million of pretax cash costs; most of those costs will be recorded in the second quarter.

Disney had planned to open Disneyland on July 17, but the reopening is now pending approval from the state. California is among the states that are seeing a worrying resurgence of Covid-19 cases as it eases lockdown orders aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. This week, the state recorded its largest spike in cases yet, with more than 7,000 new infections.

Even though the vaccine’s large-scale safety and effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated, the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic is driving the companies to prepare production of 100 million doses by this year’s September quarter. In a press release, Moderna’s chief of technical operations Juan Andres said the production scale-up was proceeding with “unprecedented speed.”

The survey looks at initial quality, calculated as the number of problems car owners have in the first 90 days of new-vehicle ownership. It collects information on tens of thousands of new vehicles to come up with the ranking. The top-performing auto brands in 2020 are Dodge and Kia, with 136 problems per 100 vehicles, or less than two problems per car. Tesla, on the other hand, made its debut at the bottom of the list among major auto makers, with 250 problems per 100 vehicles.

Natural gas futures were down 7.8% in midday trading, to $1.47 per million British thermal units. The last time natural gas closed below $1.50 was in August 1995, when it settled at $1.47. The lowest-ever price for natural gas is $1.05, which it hit in 1992. Thursday’s drop represents the fourth consecutive negative day for natural gas, which settled on Wednesday just under $1.60.

The timing of the move coincides with the previously announced decision by Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma to step off the SoftBank board, which is also effective Thursday. SoftBank will continue to have the right to appoint one person to the board of Alibaba, although the seat so far has been unfilled.

Existing-home sales fell 9.7% last month from April, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Economists polled by FactSet expected a smaller decline to an annual rate of 4.175 million, from 4.330 million a month earlier.

The Alphabet unit is expected to have 2020 digital ad sales of $39.58 billion, down 5.3% from the previous year. Google’s share of the digital ad market is expected to decline to 29.4%, from 31.6% last year.

Among those executives was Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, who provided a look at iOS 14, the new version of the iPhone operating system. There’s a new feature called App Library, to make it easier to automatically find and organize apps. You can hide some pages if you want to simplify your experience. There are suggestion features—and a set of recently downloaded apps.

American Airlines Group said in a filing on Monday that it was raising $3.5 billion through a mix of senior secured debt, common stock, convertible notes, and a new term loan facility. United Airlines Holdings, meanwhile, is gearing up to issue $5 billion in debt this week, according to Bloomberg, using its frequent-flier mileage program as collateral. Both companies’ shares closed lower Monday.

The California electric utility said Sunday it had completed or priced nearly $14 billion of debt offerings, at both the operating- and holding-company levels. The bonds were sold as part of the restructuring plan that was approved by the bankruptcy court on Saturday. It said in a May presentation that it expected to raise roughly $6 billion of additional debt with bridge financing that it aims to refinance with tax-exempt bonds.

In an open letter on Monday, Gilead Chairman and CEO Daniel O’Day writes that he hopes an inhaled version of the drug (currently administered intravenously for Covid-19 patients), would allow for easier treatment outside of a hospital setting, and could reach patients at an earlier stage of the disease.

The Wilmington, N.C., fintech is seeking to raise $100 million via an initial public offering, according to a securities filing on Monday. The $100 million is a placeholder that will likely change in future filings. The company did not disclose how many shares it would raise or their price range. That information will be in future filings.

GE said Deloitte & Touche will take over for KPMG after KPMG signs off on GE’s 2020 financial statements. At least some shareholders will be happy with the news. KPMG lost some support in recent years as losses tied to GE’s power and insurance businesses grew.

The stock is on the move because the agreement represents something new for Virgin Galactic. Up until now, the company has been focused on space tourism, taking paying customers to the edge of the atmosphere in a “space glider,” as well as developing hypersonic commercial air travel. Now the company will also help train non-NASA astronauts to go to space, so more people can participate in the “low earth economy,” or LEO for short. That’s a step beyond Virgin Galactic’s space-tourism focus.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Bobby Burleson in December pointed to 16 states that he expected to put pot legalization on their ballots this election year. That list has since dwindled as Covid-19 has dominated officials’ attention, slowing down ballot initiatives across the nation. Burleson thinks such a slowdown may be temporary. He points to budget shortfalls in states forced to shut down, especially ones that have been weighing legalization already, as motivation to legalize cannabis for tax revenue.

In a statement to Barron’s, Apple said that it was closing locations in Florida, North and South Carolina, and Arizona, beginning Saturday. The company will close two stores in Florida and North Carolina, one store in South Carolina, and six stores in Arizona.

The announcement comes after AMC CEO Adam Aron told Variety on Thursday that the company would not force customers to wear face masks, as he did not want his company to be drawn into what he called “a political controversy.”

While median wealth in the U.S. has grown, African-Americans have seen their wealth barely budge over a period longer than the past two decades, according to a report from McKinsey titled “The Economic Impact of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap,” co-written by Shelley Stewart and Jason Wright and released last August. The average median net worth of black families—$17,600—was less than 15% of white families’ $138,200, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.

J.P. Morgan analyst Phil Gresh calls a Speedway sale a “silver bullet” that would be superior to a spinoff that Marathon Petroleum is now targeting for early 2021 because it would result in substantial cash proceeds that could allow the company to retire debt and buy back stock.

Albertsons said it would offer 65.8 million shares at $18 to $20 each. The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker “ACI.” BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup are lead underwriters on the deal, according to a June 18 SEC filing.

“[W]e are working with the FDA to accelerate our regulatory approval target action date,” Mylan chief executive Heather Bresch said after a federal-district court in West Virginia ruled that the patent on Biogen’s multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera was invalid.

With OPEC maintaining its production cuts through at least July, and demand gradually rising around the world, the stage is set for oil demand to outpace supply in the second half of the year. There are still hundreds of millions of barrels of oil sitting in storage around the world, and that extra inventory could weigh on prices this year. But storage tanks no longer appear to be in danger of filling up, and that is a bullish sign for prices.

Targets of 30%, in various forms, are proliferating. Facebook, for example, aims to “have 30% more people of color, including 30% more Black people, in leadership positions” over the next five years, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a Thursday note.

Honeywell has achieved a quantum volume of 64, meaning it’s tethered together six high functioning q-bits, or quantum bits. That explanation isn’t all that helpful for many laypeople, but quantum computers are supposed to be, essentially, way more powerful than regular computers. More computing power means quantum computers can solve way harder problems.

“If you stripped away the marketing buzz around it, my guess is the value proposition for consumers is still quite a few years away before it reaches the level of relevance,” Moffett said during Wednesday’s Barron’s Investing In Tech conference.

Novavax said Tuesday the initial stage of the study would involve 130 healthy participants at two different sites in Australia, and would study the effects of a two-dose regimen of the experimental vaccine at two separate dose sizes. The study is also testing the vaccine with and without a Novavax-designed adjuvant, which is meant to increase the effectiveness of the vaccine.

That changed on Tuesday morning, as the company unveiled a barrage of Covid-19 programs: Two experimental vaccines and one experimental treatment.

The Census Bureau said Tuesday that new-home sales increased 0.6% in April from a month earlier, to an annual rate of 619,000. That is still down about 6% from a year earlier, but the result is much better than the 480,000 economists polled by FactSet predicted.

The impact of Covid-19 was front-and-center in AutoZone’s report, as it has been throughout the retail sector. “During the third quarter, we experienced the most extreme fluctuations in sales, both negative and positive, in the Company’s more than 40 year history,” management said in its news release. The company didn’t provide guidance, which has been the pattern, but said it remains flexible to meet the challenges ahead.

The 107-year-old British luxury car maker, famed for its top customer, fictional spy James Bond, has already collapsed into administration seven times and in 2014 brought in former Nissan executive Palmer to help turn around the company’s fortunes. Palmer will be replaced in August by Tobias Moers who currently oversees Mercedes-AMG, the high-performance division of Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler AG.

The news isn’t too much of a surprise, as Sanofi had been reportedly considering selling its Regeneron stake since late last year. The partnership between the two companies, which produced the eczema and asthma treatment Dupixent, first turned a profit in mid-2019.

While European regulators were successful in urging banks there to curb their dividends, few observers are certain that U.S. regulators, such as the Federal Reserve, will take similar steps. However, the Fed has other ways of achieving the same objective—namely through its annual Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review and Dodd-Frank Act Stress Tests, which are set to wrap up in June.

“Remember the MAX?” asks Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard in a Tuesday research report. The MAX, for months, was the topic his clients inquired about the most. But now the impact of the Covid-19 virus on the commercial aerospace cycle trumps all other news.

Next up is Warner Music Group, which set the price range for its much-anticipated but long-delayed stock offering. The music publisher said it plans to sell 70 million Class A common shares at between $23 and $26 a share, with all of the proceeds going to Access Industries, a company controlled by the Russian-born, U.K.-based billionaire investor Leonard Blavatnik. Warner plans to list on Nasdaq using the ticker WMG.

Amid the pandemic, department stores are struggling more than ever, Citigroup’s Paul Lejuez writes, and many brands and vendors have decided to invest in their own direct-to-consumer businesses. Many were already considering the move, as department stores have long seen their market share shrink, but Lejuez thinks the recent events will accelerate the shift away from the wholesale channel.

Comparable sales climbed 10.8% in the quarter, and, as we’ve seen with other retailers, average basket size jumped 12.5%, as shoppers chose to make less frequent, bigger trips. Digital comparable sales soared 141%, making up nearly 10 percentage points of the quarter’s comparable sales growth. Same-day delivery was up 278%.

Overall comparable sales climbed 11.2% during the quarter, while comparable sales in its U.S. home-improvement category climbed 12.3%. The company said website orders surged 80%. Rival Home Depot reported earnings on Tuesday, and although its same-store sales surged, it missed earnings estimates largely because of Covid-19-related expenses.

Comparable sales for the company’s main retail segment slipped 28%: Given its focus on apparel and accessories, and its presence in some malls, Urban Outfitters wasn’t able to stay open during the crisis. While digital sales were up double digits, it wasn’t enough to offset the losses from forced closures.

Minutes from the April 28-29 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee—the Fed’s policy-setting arm—highlight ongoing cloudiness over the economic outlook. “Uncertainty regarding the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak was extremely elevated,” the minutes say, adding that the historical behavior of the U.S. economy in response to past economic shocks provides limited guidance for making judgments about how the economy might evolve over coming quarters.

Facebook has dabbled in e-commerce before, but this time the company’s timing seems exactly right, with many small businesses either closed entirely or struggling to survive in the face of the Covid-19-related economic crisis. The move creates a new competitive front with Amazon.com and other online retailers, while also boosting the case for small businesses to buy advertising on the platform.

Google parent Alphabet and Apple announced the release of an API, short for application programming interface, for a so-called “Exposure Notifications System.” With the API, health agencies can begin launching apps that use the system to notify smartphone users when someone they’ve been in contact with has contracted Covid-19.

Luckin’s American depositary receipts were trading at $2.85 Wednesday morning, tumbling by 35% from their closing price of $4.39 on April 6 before trading was suspended by Nasdaq. Before the halt, shares had dropped 89% this year. The exchange has informed Luckin of its plan to delist the stock due to “public interest concerns” related to fabricated transactions disclosed by the company in its financial reports, as well as past failure to publicly disclose material information.

The study results published Wednesday in the science journal Nature lifted Inovio stock 8.2% to $15.76 near midday—echoing the enthusiasm that swept up shares of rival Moderna on Monday, when that company released an encouraging bit of data on the first eight Americans vaccinated in a Phase 1 clinical trial. That enthusiasm had a short half-life.

The move adds urgency to a question that investors have already begun to ask about other industry players: If oil companies don’t pay big dividends, what’s the point of owning their stocks? Absent more drastic industry restructuring, there isn’t a compelling case to buy most of them.

Royal Caribbean, the second-largest cruise operator, said it lost $6.91 a share in the first quarter, compared with per-share earnings of $1.31 a year earlier. That result includes a $1.1 billion impairment charge. On an adjusted basis, which excludes the impairment, the company lost $1.48 a share, versus earning $1.31 a share in the corresponding period last year. Revenue fell some 17% to about $2 billion.

Still, the latest tally leaves the number of jobs lost to the virus at more than 36 million—a massive number with economic consequences that are only starting to play out. The Labor Department said Thursday that the seasonally adjusted rise in initial jobless claims for the week ending May 9 fell from the previous week’s 3.2 million. Economists polled by FactSet expected a bigger fall to 2.5 million.

Expectations for demand are still extremely low for the second quarter, with the IEA projecting a decline of 19.9 million barrels a day, which would leave consumption about 20% below last year’s level. But those projections are better than they were last month.

In recent weeks, Chinese state media and scholars have lashed out at the U.S. and others they accuse of using the coronavirus outbreak as a political weapon against China. The growing tensions come as the U.S. election approaches, with China thrust into the spotlight as the source of the epidemic that has crippled the American economy and eroded President Trump’s approval rating.

Earlier in the week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were in talks for a transaction in which Uber would use its stock to buy Grubhub. But CNBC reported Thursday morning that either a deal will come soon, or there won’t be a deal at all—and so far, the two sides apparently can’t reach an agreement on price. On Thursday afternoon, Grubhub shares were down 6%, to $54.64, but still up 17% for the week. Uber was off 2.9%, at $32.07, and is now down slightly for the week.

Norwegian said in a release Thursday that it “has experienced rapid and significant impacts related to the COVID-19 global pandemic including significant softness in near-term demand and an elevated rate of cancellations for existing bookings.”

ABX464 has also been tested in ulcerative colitis, where it showed positive results in a Phase 2 trial. Abivax says that ABX464’s anti-inflammatory mechanisms could help prevent or treat the overactive immune responses that can lead to death in serious cases of Covid-19.

Early reopening might expose the company to new liabilities. “Investors must try to balance the potential benefit of an earlier reopening (less cash burn) with the risk of liability from potentially adverse health outcomes,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a Thursday research report. “All [auto makers] confront this risk during the restart.

Delta said in a filing Thursday that it plans to retire its 18 Boeing 777 planes and accelerate the retirement of MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft. Delta CEO Ed Bastian told employees in a memo that the airline is burning through $50 million in cash a day and that retiring the aircraft will “help us stem the bleeding.”

But the stock shouldn’t have initially slumped following the news, for a simple reason: Delta is predominantly an Airbus customer for wide-body jets. Out of the roughly 900 aircraft the U.S. airline operates, 18 are 777-model planes. Delta has 42 A330 aircraft and an additional 13 A350 aircraft for a total of 55 Airbus wide-body jets.

Penske, whose businesses include operating automotive and commercial truck dealerships in the U.S. and abroad, in February had declared its 35th consecutive dividend increase of a penny. It was an unusual approach as most U.S. companies put through dividend increases once a year.

In a virtual conversation with Peterson Institute for International Economics President Adam Posen on Wednesday morning, Powell said that the Fed would instead continue relying on other tools in its arsenal, including forward guidance.

The market’s early verdict on the government’s new rules appears to be that it’s too little, too late. Shares of United Airlines were down almost 10% near midday Wednesday. Delta Air Lines and American Airlines slumped more than 8% and Southwest Airlines was off 6%. United’s stock, around $20.40, was trading below its March lows and below its lowest closing price since Dec. 10, 2012. The stock has lost more than 16% in the past three trading days and is down more than 76% this year.

The maker of network services, videoconferencing tools, and security software reported third-quarter net income of $2.8 billion, or 65 cents a share, as revenue declined 8% to $12 billion from $12.96 billion in the year-ago period. After adjusting for stock compensation and other effects, Cisco reported earnings of 79 cents a share, up slightly from 78 cents a share a year ago. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had projected adjusted earnings of 71 cents a share on revenue of $11.9 billion on average, though those expectations have come down significantly since Covid-19 began to spread across the globe.

Alameda County, home to the Tesla’s flagship Fremont, Calif., plant, said in a statement Tuesday that “we have agreed Tesla can begin to augment their Minimum Business Operations this week in preparation for a possible reopening as soon as next week.”

With stock buybacks waning, how companies manage their dividends “will take on new importance as investors make judgments about equity valuations,” concludes a note by investment research firm DataTrek Research. The note’s author, Nicholas Colas, refers to a “social aversion” toward buybacks, which until recently had been a popular way for large U.S. companies to return capital to shareholders.

The trade group’s Purchase Index, which measures the weekly volume of applications for loans to acquire a home, increased 11% for the week ending May 8 from the week prior, on both a seasonally-adjusted and unadjusted basis. It’s the fourth week-over-week increase since applications started rising in mid-April.

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were in talks on a deal for Uber to acquire Grubhub in a stock deal that would issue 2.15 Uber shares for each Grubhub share. Wednesday morning, Uber announced plans to sell $750 million of senior notes due 2025, with proceeds targeted “primarily for working capital and other general corporate purposes, which may include potential acquisitions and strategic transactions.”

The trading floor—an area that has propped up profits this year as lenders’ profits slid because of billions put aside to cover Covid-19 related losses—felt the brunt of these cuts, according to new figures from data provider Coalition.

For the first quarter of 2020, Tencent grew its revenue by 26% year over year to 108 billion Chinese yuan ($15.3 billion), better than the 101 billion yuan expected by analysts polled by FactSet. Earnings attributable to stockholders hit 28.9 billion yuan, up 6% from the year-ago period. Diluted earnings came in at 2.99 yuan per share, beating analysts’ consensus expectations for 2.35 yuan.

A similar proposal last year failed, and Exxon won a court case over related issues last year. But Exxon is facing growing scrutiny about its role in climate change—and moves by other oil companies will only add to the pressure. While the last shareholder proposal failed, it won a higher percentage of the vote than it did the year before.

The notable thing about the news is how rare it is—oil and gas producers have stayed out of bankruptcy court even amid the worst oil slump in decades. Chesapeake, an Oklahoma City producer, has long carried substantial debt, and was recently at risk of having its stock delisted. Chesapeake’s financial situation had been improving, with the company signing a distressed debt exchange late last year that reduced its near-term obligations. But debt covenants loom, and the larger market is unlikely to save the company.

Stage Stores’ portfolio includes Stage department stores, Bealls, Goody’s, and Palais Royal. “[T]he increasingly challenging market environment was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which required us to temporarily close all of our stores and furlough the vast majority of our associates,” said CEO Michael Glazer in a statement. “Given these conditions, we have been unable to obtain necessary financing and have no choice but to take these actions.”

Losses totaled $590 million, or $1.30 share, on sales of $930 million, compared with a profit of $22.5 million on sales of $1.2 billion a year earlier. Sales fell 23% year over year. When adjusted for restructuring and impairment charges, losses totaled $152 million, or 34 cents a share—still well below the 19-cent loss Wall Street expected.

The British newspaper the Daily Mail, citing unidentified sources, reported on Saturday that the two companies “are thought to have held talks about a potential takeover of AMC by Amazon,” but that “it is not clear if the discussions are still active or if they will lead to a deal.” AMC is the world’s largest movie theater operator, with about 1,000 theaters world-wide with 11,000 total screens, with leading market share in both the U.S. and Europe.

Musk, for his part, appears anxious to reopen the facility. Tesla has new a growing backlog to deliver as well as its new Model Y crossover SUV.

The MAX, is on the verge of returning, according to the company, and will re-enter service amid the disruption in air travel caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “The airplane is in great shape…I’m confident we will start our [assembly] line again this month,” Calhoun said in a Fox Business interview.

Gilead has said it would donate 1.5 million doses of the drug globally, all of its existing supply, roughly enough to treat 140,000 people. The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency-use authorization on May 1 allowing the drug to be prescribed to treat Covid-19 patients in the U.S.; Japan’s drug regulator followed with its own special approval on May 7.

The company reported earnings of $1.62 a share for the quarter, beating the S&P Capital IQ Consensus by 17 cents. Cardinal also maintained its previously issued guidance for non-GAAP diluted earnings of between $5.20 and $5.40 a share. The report continued a trend of health-care companies reporting solid sales figures for the start of the year, but warning of troubles to come.

KKR, a global investment firm, has agreed to buy 60% of the beauty and hair operations in a deal that values the Coty unit, which includes the Wella, Clairol, OPI, and ghd brands, at $4.3 billion. Coty said it and KKR have signed a memorandum of understanding on the transaction, which would carve out the Wella business into a stand-alone company jointly owned by the two firms.

That has Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak thinking about the possibility that Amazon might evolve into a substantial player in Covid-19 testing—to the benefit of the company’s reputation, its competitive position, and, well, the health of humanity.

The Labor Department said Friday that the job losses in April followed a downwardly revised loss of 870,000 in March. So far, about one in five workers are unemployed.

Investors knew this would be one of the worst jobs reports in history. The decline in nonfarm payrolls for April is about three times as bad as the jobs lost over the entire Great Recession, with the depth of the losses not seen since the Great Depression. But the headline number was about in line with the 21 million job losses economists predicted, and the unemployment rate—at least on the surface—looks not as bad as feared.

The approval came less than a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its own emergency use authorization for remdesivir in Covid-19 patients. Japan acted extraordinarily quickly: Gilead submitted its application with the regulator only on Monday.

As of April 30, Royal Caribbean had about $2.3 billion of cash and cash equivalents, the company said Friday in an update of its financial situation. It added that it’s considering seeking additional financing sources, but it did not elaborate.

The announcement came as the company’s theme park in China—Shanghai Disneyland—is busy preparing for a reopening on May 11 after a four-month shutdown. Tickets for the reopening—with limited capacity under government regulations—sold out in minutes after bookings started Friday 8 a.m. local time, a sign that Chinese consumers are ready to pull out their wallets for the entertainment giant as the nation recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Cronos stock was down 27% for the year at Thursday’s closing price of $5.59. In Friday afternoon trading, shares were down more than 4%. With its balance sheet still boasting $1.3 billion in cash from Altria, investors still award Toronto-based Cronos a $2 billion market capitalization.

Normally, its quarterly report would need to be filed by June 11 under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules. But late Thursday it announced a modified schedule because of business disruptions, store closures, and employee furloughs brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Macy’s now plans to release its full results and hold an investor call on July 1, the company said.

The study wasn’t randomized, and had several limitations associated with observational studies. But it is the latest in a series of studies that have served to tamp down early excitement over the drug, which was touted heavily by some commentators and by public officials, including President Donald Trump.

As always with Bitcoin, there are several possible explanations for the surge, of varying plausibility. But a look at the price chart makes it seem that Bitcoin’s move is closely correlated with swings in most other risky assets, which have rebounded aggressively in the past month after falling in March.

UnitedHealth’s move, which it said aims to support its customers during the pandemic, will put pressure on other insurers to do the same.

For one thing, it has long been the conventional wisdom that one of the few reasons people have hung on to their pay-TV subscriptions is access to live sports. With almost all professional and college sporting events shut down, that argument carries no weight. Meanwhile, with U.S. unemployment at the highest rate since the Great Depression, and so many options for free or low-cost subscription streaming video, Americans are fleeing pay TV at a record rate.

Thursday’s figures bring the total number of first-time claims for unemployment insurance to more than 33.5 million since mid-March. The Labor Department last week reported an increase of 3.8 million initial claims on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The Dallas-based department store has secured $675 million of “debtor-in-possession financing,” or loans meant to fund its operations as it goes through the bankruptcy process. Creditors have also committed $750 million in exit funding, a sum that includes a full refinancing of the debtor-in-possession financing.

Uber reported a first-quarter loss of $2.94 billion, or $1.70 a share, compared with a loss of $1.01 billion in the year-ago period. Revenue swelled 14% to $3.54 billion from $3.1 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated a loss of 84 cents a share on revenue of $3.55 billion on average.

The ride-sharing company posted revenues of $955.7 million, up 23%, and ahead of the Wall Street analyst consensus at $898 million. In what will likely come as a pleasant surprise to the Street, Lyft posted an adjusted Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, loss of $85.2 million, narrower than the company’s original projected loss of $140 million to $145 million.

Thanks to the capital raise, he said, Norwegian now has about $3.5 billion of liquidity. “The future is certainly brighter for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and the industry than it was just a few days ago,” he added.

The new 50-50 joint venture will have £11 billion in combined revenue and 46 million customer accounts across mobile, broadband, and pay-TV platforms. Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global and José María Álvarez-Pallete López, chairman and CEO of Telefónica, said the two companies plan to invest £10 billion in the U.K. over the next five years.

In an investor call Thursday morning, the company laid out an updated timeline for development of the Covid-19 vaccine, which is faster in key ways than the timeline that had been previously described. The company says it hopes for approval of the drug next year.

The company should have enough liquidity to last 10 months—signs that the industry is stabilizing, albeit at sharply reduced capacity. Shares closed Thursday up about 2% after logging bigger gains during the session.

But the food delivery company also said it planned to spend almost all of its potential profits in the second quarter “to drive more sales for restaurants and, to a lesser extent, policies and products to keep our restaurants, drivers, and diners safe.” Shares slumped about 12% Thursday in the wake of the earnings report.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the large manufacturer of generic drugs, joined the former group Thursday morning, sticking to its previously issued guidance of between $16.6 billion and $17 billion in revenue this year. Investors rewarded the company, sending Teva shares up nearly 10%. In an interview with Barron’s, CEO Kåre Schultz said Teva expects the Covid-19 pandemic to be a wash for its business.