Whole Foods: CNBC's Wapner tweeted about Jana's stance following earnings/Board shake up (37.45 +1.20)
- Jana pleased with removal of WFM board members but skeptical of company's plan to address operations issues; concerned with lack of grocery experience from new board members and their lack of input in new plans
- Jana rejected WFM offer of two board nominees because it would have required standstill agreement until 2019
- Jana keeping all options on the table including calling for special meeting to push for its own slate of director
France's Macron names half of parliamentary candidates from civil society
French President elect Emmanuel Macron on Thursday fulfilled his promise to draw half of the candidates for his Republic on the Move party for June legislative elections from civil society .
The party, which had never fought an election until it propelled Macron to the presidency on May 7, also kept a pledge to have a balance of male and female candidates in an announcement by party secretary general Richard Ferrand at a news conference.
It named 214 of each sex in a preliminary list of 428 candidates.
Ferrand, who said the rest of the candidates it would put up in France's 577 were still a matter for discussion, added that the party was determined to achieve a working majority in parliament.
"We want to build a majority for change and therefore obtain for La Republique en Marche an absolute majority in the national assembly."
Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) said on Thursday it was delaying taking delivery of 10 wide-body A350-900 jets made by Airbus SE (AIR.PA), putting a question mark over their demand, even as the no. 2 U.S. airline placed a fresh order for 30 smaller A321-200s.
Delta's decision comes weeks after larger U.S. rival American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O) said in April that it had also deferred delivery of several wide-body Boeing Co (BA.N) and Airbus jets.
An oversupply in the market of long-distance wide-body aircraft has led to deliveries being postponed.
Delta said it would delay deliveries of 10 of the 25 A350-900 aircraft by about two to three years. The aircraft are to be delivered by 2019-20.
However AerCap Holdings NV (AER.N), the world's largest independent aircraft leasing company, on Wednesday played down concerns about weakening demand for wide-body jets, saying there was still "good solid demand" for the aircraft globally.
Delta said on Thursday delivery schedule for its A350-900 aircraft was in place, and it plans to operate its first A350 flight in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The company plans to take delivery of five A350s in 2017.
Since 2012, rival drugmakers have launched three new anti-obesity pills. However, sales of those drugs - Contrave, Belviq and Qsymia - have been disappointing, given their modest weight loss effects and reluctance by insurers to pay for them.
By contrast, Novo's newly approved anti-obesity injection Saxenda, launched in 2015 and containing the same GLP-1 ingredient as its popular diabetes drug Victoza, has fared better, despite a U.S. price of around $1,000 a month.
Its sales jumped 122 percent to 539 million Danish crowns ($79 million) in the first quarter.
Saxenda only accounts for 2 percent of Novo's overall sales but analysts expect it to sell more than $1 billion by 2023, according to consensus forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Jorgensen argues Saxenda is just the first step.
"I see a huge opportunity in obesity and I don't see a lot of competitors moving into the space," he told Reuters during a visit to London.
"Obese patients are not hard to identify and diagnose, and they are all waiting for something that works. I think we have some trustworthy bets."
Global obesity levels have tripled since 1980 and only 2 percent of the 600 million people affected are currently treated with an anti-obesity medication.
Novo's next big hope in obesity is an improved GLP-1 drug, semaglutide, that is being tested for both types of diabetes and which could reduce weight significantly more than the 5 to 10 percent seen with Saxenda.
"What will really open the obesity market is efficacy," Jorgensen said. "You probably have to get towards 15 percent for the market to fully open up."
Other early-stage Novo projects use a variety of different natural body signals to control appetite, including the first tri-agonist drug, targeting three different pathways, which recently entered initial Phase I testing.
DIVERSIFYING
Diversifying into "adjacent" areas to diabetes, like obesity, is a key strategic goal for the new Novo boss, who takes over at a challenging time for the drugmaker.
He has said he would consider acquisitions to help fill out the product portfolio, with purchases in the "low single-digit billions of dollars" on the agenda.
Elsewhere, Novo also faces challenges in its haemophilia business, where a new experimental drug from Roche and novel gene therapy treatments threaten to undercut the market for its mainstay product NovoSeven.
Jorgensen is looking for deals to build up the blood products franchise but didn't say when he might make an acquisition.
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Novo had approached Global Blood Therapeutics about acquiring the U.S. biotech company. However, people familiar with the matter said Novo's offer fell short and the two sides had not been able to bridge the valuation gap. Jorgensen declined to comment.
Last week, the company reported better-than-expected profits in the first quarter and nudged up its full-year target.
Snap: Color on Quarter --> down 22% just undder $18 premarket
- Canccord Genuity: "The urge for investors will be to compare this volatility [after the earnings report] to Facebook's early life as a public company. We do believe there should be a stock recovery as more consistent expectations settle in, but our somewhat cautious thesis remains unchanged: SNAP's user base is very healthy and very engaged, but DAU growth should continue to decelerate, monetization for the platform needs to ramp as fast as they have ever seen (and therefore could be uneven), and formidable headwinds persist in the form of Facebook/Instagram competition."
- Pivotal: Snap reported light 1Q17 earnings, representing a decline in revenues vs. 4Q16, which while consistent with the company's prior guidance, nonetheless represents a surprising element of seasonality in the business, and risks of less growth ahead than we previously expected. We are modifying our model with a new $9 per share price target on a YE2017 basis. THey continue to rate the stock Sell.
- RBC notes TWTR shares collapsed 24% on its first EPS print. So too did SNAP... While Revenue, EBITDA, and DAUs came in in-line with our estimates, Revenue & EBITDA came in 5% & 3% light vs. Street and clearly much lighter vs. "Market expectations." THey would strongly argue against Q1 results being thesis-changing. Way too early. Their estimates are unchanged, and our PT remains $31. Maintain Outperform.
- Stifel lowers tgt to $22 from $24 after nap's first results as a public co fell short of consensus expectations, with the company's lack of quarterly guidance leading to a widely varying range of estimates on both the top- and bottom-lines. Snap also posted fewer DAU additions than investors were looking for, prompting concerns about competition with Facebook and the co's ability to grow users outside of the U.S. Snap's 1Q financials overshadowed healthy trends in engagement, however, with daily Snaps created (3.0B) and time spent (30+ mins) showing impressive gains since their last disclosures. Looking at the bigger picture, Snap operates a nascent advertising business in hyper-growth mode and a cutting edge mobile application that pushes the limits of both devices and cellular networks, leading to a wide variety of potential revenue / user growth outcomes in the near-term. They continue to think Snap has the potential to develop into a durable digital media franchise with considerable upside from its current market cap, but investor skepticism and near-term supply / demand dynamics related to the co's impending lock-up expiration could hold Snap's stock price in check for the time being. They lower our Price Target on Snap shares to $22 and maintain their Hold rating.
- Needham notes their estimates weren't close. SNAP's results were disappointing and suggested several business model problems: 1) Rev was $150mm and costs of rev were $163mm, suggesting negative gross margin; 2) ARPU was $0.90 vs hosting costs alone at $0.60/user; 3) Revenue rose by $111mm y/y, yet Adjusted EBITDA fell by $95mm to a loss of $188mm, suggesting no operating leverage; 4) FCF loss was $173mm, worse than SNAP's 1Q16 FCF loss of $105mm. A bright spot was 8mm users added in 1Q17 (to 166mm), up 5% q/q, and better than the 5mm users added in 4Q16. SNAP gave no guidance. They expect SNAP's shares to open down about 25%, implying a valuation multiple of 30x FY17E revenue. This is still too high, in their view; Underperform.
- Aegis would characterize Snap's first quarter out of the gate as a miss on revenues and essentially in-line user growth. As such, they view the sell-off as warranted. Their concerns on the business and the stock has not changed. They remain concerned with competition from Instagram for both users and advertising dollars - a key risk factor for the business and the stock. They remain cautious of Snap's ability to grow its user base and advertising revenue at a rate significant enough to justify the stock's valuation.
- Cantor Fitzgerald upgrade to Neutral.
- Oppenheimer upgraded to Outperform.