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  • Domino's Pizza (DPZ) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS; tgt lowered to $385
  • Gilead Sciences (GILD) upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JP Morgan; tgt raised to $80
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• MRVI -7.2% (names Danaher exec as its new CEO)
• TYRA -5% (files for $400 mln mixed securities shelf offering)
• EHAB -3.1% (acquires hospice agency in Texas)
• PLTK -2.8% (Provides Update on Shares Tendered to Date in its Tender Offer for its Common Stock)
• RCKT -2.3% (prices offering of 6.8 mln shares of common stock at $14.75 per share)
• EVRI -0.8% (discloses that it has entered into an agreement to acquire certain strategic assets of Venuetize)

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

• AYI +5.2%, WELL +1.3% (guidance update)

Other news:

• AUTL +14.2% (has entered into an agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb)
• POSH +12.9% (to be acquired for $17.90 per share in cash)
• RIVN +8.3% (reports Q3 production and delivery data; remains on track to deliver on its 25000 annual production guidance)
• BLKB +6.8% (Clearlake Capital discloses 18.4% stake; firm may push for review of strategic alternatives)
• SITM +5% (delivers precision timing solution for Tesla Dojo AI Supercomputer)
• HUT +4.7% (provides September production and operations update)
• DNA +4.5% (acquires Circularis to strengthen capabilities in cell and gene therapy)
• WES +4.4% (WES and OXY to explore carbon capture systems)
• AMRX +4.3% (announces commercial launch of ALYMSYS)
• GSM +4.1% (to restart silicon metal facility in South Africa)
• BLUE +3.9% (collaborates with Real Endpoints Marketplace to help scale delivery of a first-of-its-kind value-based contract for one-time gene therapy)
• OLN +3.1% (expects to cease methylene chloride and chloroform production at its Germany facility by 3Q23)
• GLPG +3% (says EMA committee has adopted a positive opinion on Jyseleca)
• LUMN +2.6% (Brightspeed begun operations as a new company following the completion of the previously announced acquisition of incumbent local exchange carrier assets and associated operations across 20 states from LUMN by Apollo-managed funds)
• ALGN +2.5% (introduces latest iTero-exocad Connector software release)
• DINO +2.4% (entered into another Stock Purchase Agreement with REH Company)
• LILM +1.9% (stock offering)
• OXY +1.9% (WES and OXY to explore carbon capture systems)

Analyst comments:

• COMM +6.2% (upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse)
• BK +3.1% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup)

Early premarket gappers

• Gapping up:
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• Gapping down:
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 FT - Which nuclear weapon could Putin use against Ukraine ?



 It has been called the biggest nuclear threat to world safety since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis: as Vladimir Putin seeks to salvage his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president has stepped up his threats to use nuclear weapons. 

He said last week he would use “all available means” to keep Russia safe after unilaterally proclaiming four eastern Ukrainian provinces part of Russia. The US had “created a precedent” when it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, he added.

At the weekend Chechen leader and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov suggested the Russian president consider using “low-yield nuclear weapons” in Ukraine — a proposal dismissed by the Kremlin on Monday, however. There were “no other considerations” beyond using nuclear weapons according to Russia’s military doctrine, which permits their deployment if Russia is struck first or if the very existence of the state is at risk, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Vladimir Putin addresses a rally in Red Square to mark the annexation of four regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops © Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images

 

Western officials and military experts believe the risk that Putin will deploy nuclear weapons is low. But as Russian forces suffer military setbacks in south-eastern Ukraine, they also recognise that risk is rising.

Here is what we know about the nuclear weapons Putin could be tempted to use: 

‘Tactical’ vs ‘strategic’ nuclear weapons

The Cuban missile crisis was about “strategic” nuclear weapons, which are powerful enough to obliterate whole cities thousands of miles from any battlefield. The issue in Ukraine instead revolves around smaller, so-called tactical nuclear weapons

These smaller nuclear warheads are intended for battlefield use and are designed to destroy targets in a specific area. Even so, many of the warheads are more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the US, which had an explosive yield equivalent to about 20 kilotons of dynamite. 

 

“So-called tactical nuclear missiles for battlefield use have a yield of generally between one and 50 kilotons [of dynamite] . . . devastating over areas typically two square miles,” General Sir Richard Barrons, former head of UK joint forces command, told the BBC on Monday.

The US and USSR once kept huge stockpiles but, after the cold war ended, the US gave up all but 230 of them, believing that “increasingly efficient conventional weapons could do the job” better instead, according to a 1989 analysis published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

Russia kept about 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads. They can be placed on various systems used to deliver conventional explosives, such as Kalibr cruise missiles or Islander ballistic missiles, and can be launched from land or sea.

How would these weapons be deployed?

Experts see three ways in which Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons.

The first is demonstrative — a nuclear shot that does not kill anyone. It could be a detonation underground, over the Black Sea, perhaps somewhere high in the skies above Ukraine or on an uninhabited site such as Snake Island.

The blast’s electromagnetic pulse would fry unprotected electronic equipment and the radioactive fallout, while large initially, would fall to about 1 per cent of the initial radioactive blast in 48 hours. Most of the radioactive dust sucked into a rising cloud by the explosion would settle back on earth nearby within 24 hours of the strike and could be an extreme biological hazard. Other particles may also be dispersed by prevailing winds and settle in much lower concentrations over large parts of the globe. 

It would start the “escalation ladder” and raise the prospect of a Russian attack on a big city. It would probably spark a global backlash, for no military gain, making Russians “more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been”, as US president Joe Biden said in a September 16 interview. 

The demonstration effect may also be unclear as it would show that Russia was ready to break the taboo on nuclear weapons but that it remained cautious on using their explosive power to the full.

That, according to Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor emeritus of war studies at King's College London, is one reason the US discarded the demonstration option in 1945 before dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. 

The second possibility is a strike on a Ukrainian military objective or key piece of infrastructure — for example, a missile strike on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. 

How useful this would be is also open to question. Ukraine’s military forces are highly dispersed and US Army studies have concluded that a one kiloton warhead has to detonate within 90 metres of a tank to inflict serious damage. 

Some experts say it would make little sense for Russia to strike battleground targets in provinces it now considers its own. Russia’s poorly motivated and badly equipped army would also be exposed to the radioactive fallout.

The third and most escalatory move would be a strike on a Nato member, including the US — as suggested by Dmitri Trenin, the former head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a Russian think-tank.

In a state television interview last week, Trenin said Russia needed to show it was serious about a US nuclear strike for its deterrent to be effective. He added that the west was also wrong to assume that Putin would respond to battlefield defeats by using nuclear weapons only against Ukraine. 

“It’s entirely possible the strike would not hit the theatre of battle but somewhere a certain distance away,” Trenin said.

How the west would respond to an attack on Nato is hard to predict. Article V invoking a collective defence response from other Nato members would be triggered.

Last month Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said Russian nuclear use would have “catastrophic consequences” without specifying what those consequences might be. He also made clear that the US had “spelt out” in private conversations with Moscow how the west would react. On Sunday Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg warned of “severe consequences for Russia”. 

That might involve a conventional military attack that destroys Russia’s Black Sea fleet, as retired CIA director and army general David Petraeus suggested on Sunday. 

But western officials have by and large remained vague in their threats of retaliation even if Putin targets Ukraine, a non-Nato 

member, as deterrence rests on ambiguity.