Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- MUR -7.1%, MTH -5.7%, TSLA -4.1%, BPOP -3.4%, EW -3.3%, NXGN -3.2%, DOV -2.9%, LEVI -2.7% (also reinstates dividend), TER -2.7% (also authorizes $2 bln share repurchase program), WHR -2.6%, CREE -2.1%, AVT -2%, AAPL -1.9%, CCI -1.8%, REZI -1.5%, SLG -1.4%, SHW -1.2%, MKC -1.1%, CNMD -0.8%, TSCO -0.8%, ABMD -0.8%, SEIC -0.7%, FB -0.6%
Other news:
- ZYME -18.3% (provides update on Phase 1 clinical trial for ZW49)
- PWFL -12.4% (stock offering)
- PUK -8% (provides update on Jackson plan to separate Jackson in Q2 2021 through demerger)
- SRGA -7.2% (prices offering of 25 mln shares of common stock at $1.50 per share)
- PHAS -5.4% (presents data from Phase 1b/2a pilot study of pemziviptadil)
- AMC -4.9% (noteholders elected to convert all $600.0 mln of 2.95% Convertible Senior Secured Notes due 2026 into shares of Class A common stock at conversion price of $13.51 per share)
- CVAC -2.9% (prices follow-on public offering of 5,000,000 common shares at a public offering price of $90.00 per common share)
- AIRG -1.8% (announces nationwide availability of first AirgainConnect platform product)
- LMNL -1.6% (provides update regarding strategy)
- CCI -1.5% (signs new long-term agreement with Verizon to support 5G)
Analyst comments:
- ETRN -4.6% (downgraded to Underweight from Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley)
- FRT -2.9% (downgraded to Sector Perform from Sector Outperform at Scotiabank)
- CPA -2.1% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank)
- BBBY -2% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities)
- ARCO -1.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Bradesco BBI)
- BJ -1.6% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Gordon Haskett)
- KR -1.5% (downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Telsey Advisory Group)
- HELE -1.4% (downgraded to Perform from Outperform at Oppenheimer)
- VIAC -1.4% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse)
- EBAY -1.3% (downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank)
Early premarket gappers
- Gapping up:
- PSAC +30.5%, GME +25.9%, GNCA +25.7%, AFG +22.1%, HOLX +7.6%, STM +7.1%, BBW +6.9%, EXTR +5.6%, DEO +5.2%, AGTC +4.5%, NG +3.5%, CALX +3.3%, REZI +2.7%, ACIW +2.6%, ISBC +2.6%, SLM +2.5%, NOW +2.4%, MEOH +2.3%, CVE +2.1%, LRCX +1.8%, DRE +1.6%, CVBF +1.1%, URI +1.1%, MKSI +0.9%, AVT +0.8%, WERN +0.7%
- Gapping down:
- ZYME -24.2%, AXDX -16%, PWFL -10.1%, SUNW -9.9%, SRGA -9.9%, PUK -7.4%, CREE -6%, MTH -5.7%, TSLA -5.3%, OBSV -4.9%, WHR -4.6%, LEVI -4.5%, ASO -4.4%, AIRG -3.7%, TER -3.6%, MUR -3.6%, ACB -3.5%, NXGN -3.2%, EW -2.2%, AAPL -2.1%, AMC -2%, CCI -1.8%, CCI -1.8%, PHAS -1.5%, RJF -1.2%, SEER -0.9%, CNMD -0.8%
BaFin employee suspended over Wirecard insider dealing allegations
German financial watchdog files criminal complaint against staff member
German financial watchdog BaFin has filed a criminal complaint against one of its employees who is suspected of having used insider information when trading Wirecard shares last summer, just before the German payments company disclosed that €1.9bn in corporate cash was missing from its accounts.
In a statement published on Thursday morning, the regulator said the employee had been suspended with immediate effect and that it had taken disciplinary steps against them.
“The employee bought structured financial products linked to Wirecard on June 17 2020,” BaFin said, adding that Wirecard on the subsequent day disclosed that auditor EY could not verify €1.9bn in corporate cash. Shares in Wirecard lost more than 60 per cent within a day.
BaFin has long been under fire for its mishandling of early warning signals of misconduct at Wirecard.
Gerhard Schick, head of consumer lobby group Finance Watch Germany, on Thursday called for the dismissal of BaFin president Felix Hufeld and his deputy Elisabeth Roegele, adding that the watchdog started to crack down on potential insider trading by its staff only after intense public pressure had built up.
After short sellers in 2016 published fraud and money-laundering allegations, the regulator discussed the “homogeneous cultural background” of investors betting against the company, noting they were “mainly Israeli and British citizens”.
In 2019, it temporarily protected Wirecard from short sellers, brushing aside Bundesbank concerns and filing a criminal complaint against the Financial Times journalists who reported the fraud allegations disclosed by whistleblowers.
Mr Hufeld suggested Wirecard might be the victim of an elaborate plot by short sellers even after the company discovered that €1.9bn of its stated cash was missing, according to three people briefed on the matter and a document seen by the FT.
BaFin said on Thursday that the potential insider trading by its employee was discovered during a special audit into its staff’s share transactions, adding that it filed a criminal complaint against the employee with criminal prosecutors in Stuttgart on January 27.
BaFin in October banned employees from trading shares and other securities in companies that it oversees. An internal investigation showed four employees in 2020 had been in breach of disclosure rules by reporting trades in Wirecard securities with two to eight-month delays.
One of the employees left BaFin at the end of November after his contract was terminated. Three other BaFin employees are being probed over similar allegations.
In December, the head of the German audit watchdog Apas was suspended with immediate effect after admitting trading shares in Wirecard while conducting a probe into the company’s auditor.
Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Works Against Mutations Found in U.K, South Africa Variants, Lab Study Finds
The results, while preliminary and not peer reviewed, are the latest to suggest that vaccines can protect against the strains
A Pfizer Inc. PFE -2.87% laboratory study found that coronavirus mutations identified in the U.K. and South Africa had only small impacts on the effectiveness of antibodies generated by the company’s Covid-19 vaccine.
The antibodies were slightly less effective against mutations in the variant identified in South Africa, according to the study. It was posted Wednesday on the online server bioRxiv, which publishes scientific papers before they have been peer-reviewed.
Researchers have been racing to assess whether Covid-19 vaccines and drugs will still work against new variants, as governments roll out shots they hope will allow schools, businesses and other establishments to reopen.
Pfizer’s findings are consistent with other preliminary results reported in recent weeks by several research groups looking at the effectiveness of available vaccines against the new variants.
The research is still preliminary, however. Pfizer’s study was conducted in a lab and tested only a subset of mutations found in the variants, but not the variants themselves. Also, the researchers didn’t assess whether their results were statistically significant.
Yet these and other results suggest that the impact of the variants on the shots will be “relatively modest, which is good news for the vaccines,” said Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied how coronavirus proteins interact with antibodies and wasn’t involved in the Pfizer study.
Pfizer said the “findings do not indicate the need for a new vaccine to address the emerging variants.” The company said, however, that it and partner BioNTech SE BNTX -0.30% were prepared to respond to a vaccine-resistant version of the virus.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine uses a new technology named messenger RNA, after the molecular couriers of genetic instructions, which allows developers to make more rapid changes to their vaccines than more traditional techniques. The other vaccine authorized in the U.S., from biotech Moderna Inc., also uses mRNA technology.
A recent preliminary study by Moderna, in collaboration with scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, showed antibodies generated by its vaccine were less effective at binding the mutated spike proteins of the South African variant. The researchers didn’t find a difference for the U.K. variant’s spike proteins. The coronavirus uses its spike proteins, which stud its surface, to enter and infect cells. The proteins are key targets of antibodies.
As a precaution, the company said it was developing a booster shot for the South Africa variant.
The new Pfizer study found that antibodies generated by its vaccine were slightly better at binding versions of the virus that had some of the mutations found in the U.K. variant.
That could be because the scientists tested their U.K. variant-like viruses against a variant that lacked an older, but key mutation that increases transmissibility, but makes the virus more susceptible to antibodies, Dr. McLellan said.
The gold standard would be to test antibodies against the variants themselves, he and others said, to understand how their unique constellation of mutations might affect natural immunity or protection from a vaccine.
Those studies are ongoing in labs around the world.
Pfizer researchers, who worked with scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch, didn’t perform statistical-significance tests, a key way scientists assess if their results are due to chance and have real-world importance, another important limitation, scientists not involved in the study said.
Rafael Casellas, a molecular immunologist at the NIH, said it was important to keep monitoring the evolution of the coronavirus to assess whether vaccines and other therapies will need to be updated, or whether booster shots will be necessary. “We can’t take this virus lightly,” he said. “We just don’t have enough information so we need to be cautious.”
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