Pfizer Inc. aims to expand its vaccine business by becoming a leader in the new gene-based technology behind its successful Covid-19 shots.
Pfizer will develop new shots using the technology, called mRNA, to target other viruses and pathogens beyond the coronavirus, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said in an interview. He said the company’s scientists and engineers gained a decade’s worth of experience in the past year working on the Covid-19 vaccine with Germany’s BioNTech SE , and is ready to pursue mRNA on its own.
“There is a technology that has proven dramatic impact and dramatic potential,” Mr. Bourla said. “We are the best positioned company right now to take it to the next step because of our size and our expertise.”
Pfizer will increase R&D in the technology, including adding at least 50 employees whose assignments will include mRNA, and it will harness the new mRNA manufacturing network it assembled in the past year to compete.
“We are now ahead and we plan to maintain the gap,” he said of the mRNA vaccine market.
Facebook is planning to create a version of Instagram for children under the age of 13, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list,” Vishal Shah, Instagram’s VP of product, wrote on an employee board, according to BuzzFeed.
“We will be building a new youth pillar within the Community Product Group to focus on two things: (a) accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and (b) building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time,” Shah added.
The new project will reportedly be overseen by head of Instagram Adam Mosseri and led by Vice President Pavni Diwanji. Diwanij previously worked at Google where she oversaw the creation of children’s products like YouTube Kids.
Instagram’s terms of use currently prohibit people under of 13 from using the app.
“We have to do a lot here,” Mosseri told BuzzFeed. “But part of the solution is to create a version of Instagram for young people or kids where parents have transparency or control. It’s one of the things we’re exploring.”
Mosseri said the project was in early development and added that Instagram does not yet have a “detailed plan” in place.
“Increasingly kids are asking their parents if they can join apps that help them keep up with their friends. Right now there aren’t many options for parents, so we’re working on building additional products – like we did with Messenger Kids – that are suitable for kids, managed by parents,” a Facebook company spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. “We’re exploring bringing a parent-controlled experience to Instagram to help kids keep up with their friends, discover new hobbies and interests, and more.”
BuzzFeed notes that Instagram had just this week published a blog post addressing bullying among its younger, teenage users.
“We require everyone to be at least 13 to use Instagram and have asked new users to provide their age when they sign up for an account for some time. While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth,” Instagram wrote in the Tuesday blog post. “To address this challenge, we’re developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features.”
The new features included restricting direct messages between teens and adults who they don’t follow, prompting teens to be more cautious about interactions in direct messages, encouraging teens to make their accounts private and making it harder for adults to find and follow teens.
Investors who bet against stocks are targeting special-purpose acquisition companies, one of the hottest growth areas on Wall Street. The dollar value of bearish bets against shares of SPACs has more than tripled to about $2.7 billion from $724 million at the start of the year, according to data from S3 Partners.
Some of the stocks under attack belong to large SPACs that surged in recent months, in part because they were backed by high-profile financiers. A blank-check company created by venture capitalist
Chamath Palihapitiya
that plans to merge with lending startup Social Finance Inc. is a popular target, with 19% of its shares outstanding sold short, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The short interest in
Churchill Capital Corp. IV,
a SPAC created by former investment banker
Michael Klein
that is merging with electric-vehicle startup Lucid, more than doubled in March to about 5%.
Others are wagering against companies after they combine with SPACs. Muddy Waters Capital LLC announced last week it was betting against
XL Fleet Corp.
, a fleet electrification company that went public in December after merging with a SPAC. XL has since said Muddy Waters’s report, which alleged XL inflated its sales pipeline and made misleading claims about its technology among other issues, had “numerous inaccuracies.”
XL’s stock price dropped the day Muddy Waters released its report by about 13%, to $13.86, from its prior close on March 2. Shares closed Friday at $12.79.
Shares of
Lordstown Motors Corp.
fell nearly 17% Friday after Hindenburg Research released a report saying the electric-truck startup had misled investors on its orders and production. The company, which merged with a SPAC in October, said the report contained half-truths and lies. The short interest in Lordstown shares rose to 5% from 3.4% in the week before the report’s publication, according to data from S&P.
“SPACs are an area of focus,” said Muddy Waters’s
Carson Block.
The veteran short seller said SPACs largely make up the universe of companies he views as both “abysmal” and relatively free from technical challenges, such as high short interest, which can make betting against them difficult.
SPACs are shell firms that raise capital by issuing stock with the sole purpose of buying or merging with a private company to take it public. They are dominating the market for new stock issues, becoming a status symbol for celebrities while pumping the value of acquisitions, like betting company
DraftKings Inc.,
into the tens of billions of dollars.
Hedge funds that buy into SPACs early see them as a way to make lofty returns without much risk. Individual investors are attracted by the chance to get positions in newly public companies that they could rarely purchase through traditional IPOs. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement on Wednesday warning that it “is never a good idea to invest in a SPAC just because someone famous sponsors or invests in it.”
A monthslong rally in the stocks lost steam recently amid a broad selloff in technology and high-growth companies. An index of SPAC stocks operated by Indxx fell about 17% from mid-February to March 10, while the Nasdaq Composite Index declined about 7.3% over the same period.
“These are all momentum stocks, and a lot of people want to short them,” said
Matthew Tuttle,
whose firm Tuttle Tactical Management runs an exchange-traded fund that allows investors to hold a portfolio of SPAC stocks. Mr. Tuttle is preparing to launch an ETF that bets against “de-SPAC” stocks of companies that have merged with a SPAC—like electric-truck manufacturer
Nikola Corp.
and baked-goods maker
Hostess Brands Inc.
—and a separate fund that invests in the stocks.
Private companies are flooding to special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, to bypass the traditional IPO process and gain a public listing. WSJ explains why some critics say investing in these so-called blank-check companies isn’t worth the risk. Illustration: Zoë Soriano/WSJ
Postmerger companies are particularly attractive to short because they have larger market capitalizations, making their shares easier to borrow, and because early investors in the SPACs are eager to sell shares to lock in profits, analysts and fund managers said.
Short sellers borrow stocks they believe are overvalued and immediately sell them, hoping to repurchase the shares for a lower price when they need to be returned and to pocket the difference. The strategy proved dangerous in recent months when individual investors organized on social media to push up stocks like GameStop Corp., forcing short sellers to buy shares and cap their losses, helping to drive prices still higher.
Continued strong investor demand for SPACs could catch short sellers in a similar squeeze. Shorting SPACs can also be risky because their shares have a natural floor at $10, the price at which they can be redeemed before a merger, and because they are prone to sharp price moves, analysts said.
Still, the portion of shares sold short in SPACs and their acquisitions is climbing.
A blank-check company created by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya that plans to merge with lending startup Social Finance Inc. is a popular target.
Photo:
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Some are betting against stocks they believe rose too fast, to unsustainable valuations. The price of bioplastics company
Danimer Scientific Inc.
nearly tripled to $64 in the first six weeks of the year after it was bought by a SPAC. The short interest in Danimer stock has climbed to 8.5% from around 1% in January, and its share price has traded down to about $42, according to data from S&P.
Others are making bearish bets to hedge against potential losses in SPAC stocks they own.
Veteran short seller
Eduardo Marques
cited SPACs and their boosting the number of U.S.-listed stocks as a short-selling opportunity, according to a pitch for a stock-picking hedge fund called Pertento he plans to launch this year. America’s roster of public companies had shrunk from the mid-1990s onward, but that trend has recently reversed, partly because of SPACs.
Their popularity has helped spark new Wall Street offerings.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
this year started offering clients set baskets of similar stocks to short, pitching them as a way to hedge SPAC exposure, people who have seen the offering said. Clients typically customize the baskets Goldman offers, which are thematic and sector-focused, such as on bitcoin and electric vehicles.
Kerrisdale Capital founder
Sahm Adrangi
started shorting postmerger SPAC companies earlier than most, with a public bet in November against the stock of frozen-food maker
Tattooed Chef Inc.,
which still trades above its price at that time. But the stock has fallen about 13% during the recent market slump.
“We saw these stocks go up a lot and now that people are de-risking, these highflying SPACs are coming down to earth,” Mr. Adrangi said.
—Amrith Ramkumar and Mike DeStefano contributed to this article.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How long do you think the SPAC boom will continue, and why? Join the conversation below.
Write to Matt Wirz at matthieu.wirz@wsj.com and Juliet Chung at juliet.chung@wsj.com
Israel currently has no plans to follow new US guidelines that relax mask-wearing requirements for people who are fully vaccinated, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new guidelines on Monday, saying that fully-vaccinated Americans can gather with other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing.
The recommendations also say that vaccinated people can come together in the same way with people considered at low-risk for severe disease, such as in the case of vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up
However, senior Israeli health ministry officials told Kan that Israel would not advocate similar steps yet, saying there was not yet enough information on whether or not vaccinated people could still transmit the virus.
Kan called the Israeli approach “very strict,” given clear evidence that the vaccines dramatically lower infections.
The issue is likely to come to the fore in a few weeks during the Passover holiday, when families traditionally gather for large, festive Seder meals. Last year’s holiday was celebrated under Israel’s first — and tightest — coronavirus lockdown, with many elderly forced to celebrate alone.
Channel 12 news reported, without citing a source, that Health Ministry officials have started discussions on whether to make it easier for families to gather.
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein told Channel 12 on Sunday that he hoped families would be able to celebrate Passover together at the end of the month.
“I very much hope we will be able to be with the whole family… I am hopeful, and this is a hope with a pretty good basis… that with proper conduct [by the public], we will be able to avoid more lockdowns. I really do ask everyone to help us with this,” Edelstein said.
Perahia Shilo arranges the Passover Seder dinner table next to a picture of her children and grandchildren, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, April 8, 2020. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
The CDC issued its guidance to address a growing demand, as more adults have been getting vaccinated and wondering if it gives them greater freedom to visit family members, travel, or do other things that they had done before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world last year.
“We know that people want to get vaccinated so they can get back to doing the things they enjoy with the people they love,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in a statement.
The CDC is continuing to recommend that fully vaccinated people continue to wear well-fitted masks, avoid large gatherings, and physically distance themselves from others when out in public. The CDC also advised vaccinated people to get tested if they develop symptoms that could be related to COVID-19.
Officials say a person is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the last required dose of vaccine. About 30 million Americans — or only about nine percent of the US population — have been fully vaccinated with a federally authorized COVID-19 vaccine so far, according to the CDC.
In Israel, the percentage is much higher. On Monday Israel vaccinated its five millionth citizen against the coronavirus as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted that the entire adult population would be inoculated by the end of April.
Granby kindergarten school teacher Christina Kibby (right) receives the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine from pharmacist Madeline Acquilano, at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, March 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Of the five million who have now had the first vaccine dose, 3,789,118 have also had the second, according to Health Ministry figures released Monday. I
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak early last year, 803,260 people have been diagnosed with the virus and there are 37,698 active patients.
Out of Israel’s 9.3 million total population, some three million, including children and recovered, were not initially eligible to be vaccinated. Israel announced last week it would start giving the recovered a single shot.
The prime minister also said Monday he had been in contact with Pfizer and the company will soon announce a vaccine that is approved for use on children.
I’m proud to work at The Times of Israel
I’ll tell you the truth: Life here in Israel isn’t always easy. But it’s full of beauty and meaning.
I’m proud to work at The Times of Israel alongside colleagues who pour their hearts into their work day in, day out, to capture the complexity of this extraordinary place.
I believe our reporting sets an important tone of honesty and decency that’s essential to understand what’s really happening in Israel. It takes a lot of time, commitment and hard work from our team to get this right.
Your support, through membership in The Times of Israel Community, enables us to continue our work. Would you join our Community today?
Thank you,
Sarah Tuttle Singer, New Media Editor
Join the Times of Israel Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
You’re serious. We appreciate that!
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we come to work every day – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
General Electric Co. is nearing a $30 billion-plus deal to combine its aircraft-leasing business with Ireland’s
AerCap
AER 1.62%
Holdings NV, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a string of moves by the industrial conglomerate to restructure its once-sprawling operations.
Though details of how the deal would be structured couldn’t be learned, it is expected to have a valuation of more than $30 billion, some of the people said. An announcement is expected Monday, assuming the talks don’t fall apart.
The
GE
GE 0.29%
unit, known as GE Capital Aviation Services, or Gecas, is the biggest remaining piece of GE Capital, a once-sprawling lending operation that rivaled the biggest U.S. banks but nearly sank the company during the 2008 financial crisis. GE already took a major step back from the lending business in 2015 when it said it would exit the bulk of GE Capital, and a deal for Gecas would represent another big move in that direction.
It would also represent another significant move by GE Chief Executive Larry Culp to right the course of a company that has been battered in recent years by souring prospects for some of its top business lines and a structure that has fallen out of favor with investors.
With more than 1,600 aircraft owned or on order, Gecas is one of the world’s biggest jet-leasing companies, alongside AerCap and Los Angeles-based Air Lease Corp. It leases passenger aircraft made by Boeing Co. and
Airbus SE
as well as regional jets and cargo planes to customers ranging from flagship airlines to startups. Gecas had $35.86 billion in assets as of Dec. 31.
AerCap has a market value of $6.5 billion and an enterprise value—adjusted for debt and cash—of about $34 billion, according to S&P Capital IQ, and around 1,400 owned or ordered aircraft. The company has experience in deal making, paying around $7.6 billion in 2014 to buy International Lease Finance Corp. AerCap’s revenue last year was about $4.4 billion, down from around $5 billion in the previous few years.
The aviation business has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a sharp drop in global travel and prompted airlines to ground planes. Some airlines have sought to defer lease payments or purchases of new aircraft. Gecas had an operating loss of $786 million on revenue of $3.95 billion in 2020. GE took a roughly $500 million write-down on the value of its aircraft portfolio in the fourth quarter.
Combining the companies could afford cost-cutting opportunities and help the new entity weather the downturn.
Separating Gecas could help GE with its efforts to shore up its balance sheet and improve cash flows. Despite a recent increase, GE’s share price remains below where it was before significant problems in the company’s power and finance units emerged in recent years.
The Boston company has a market value of around $119 billion after the shares more than doubled in the past six months as it posted improving results. Still, the stock has fallen by about three-quarters from the peak just over 20 years ago.
Mr. Culp became the first CEO from outside of GE in late 2018 after the company was forced to slash its dividend and sell off businesses. The former
Danaher Corp.
boss has sought to simplify GE’s wide-ranging conglomerate structure further, as other industrial giants such as Siemens AG and
Honeywell International Inc.
have done in recent years.
Activist investor Trian Fund Management LP, which has owned a significant position in the company since 2015 and holds a seat on its board, has supported such changes.
Early in his tenure, Mr. Culp said he had no plans to sell Gecas, a move his predecessor
John Flannery
had considered after the unit drew interest from private-equity firms pushing further into the leasing business.
Mr. Culp has sought to even out cash flows and refocus on core areas. Operations he has parted with include the company’s biotech business, which was purchased by Danaher in a $21 billion deal that closed last year. GE also sold its iconic lightbulb business in a much smaller deal last year, and previously said it was unloading its majority stake in oil-field-services firm Baker Hughes Co.
GE has cut overhead costs and jobs in its jet-engine unit while streamlining its power business. The pandemic continues to pressure the jet-engine business, GE’s largest division, however.
The company also makes healthcare machines and power-generating equipment, and the rest of GE Capital extends loans to help customers purchase its machines and contains legacy insurance assets too.
AerCap is based in Ireland and Gecas has headquarters there as well. The aircraft-leasing industry has long had a significant presence in Ireland due to the country’s favorable tax regime and the importance of Guinness Peat Aviation in the development of the sector. (A deal between GE and AerCap would reunite two companies that bought their main assets from GPA.) The industry has gotten more competitive as Chinese companies have gained market share, however, and the combination could help the new group stem that tide.
Shares in aircraft-leasing companies plummeted along with much of the market in the early days of the pandemic as demand from major airlines, who lease planes to avoid the costs of owning them, evaporated. But many of the major lessors’ stocks have recovered lost ground and then some in the months since as lockdowns ease and the outlook for travel improves.
AerCap’s Chief Executive Aengus Kelly said on its fourth-quarter earnings call this month that he expects airlines to shift more toward leasing planes as they rebuild their balance sheets, in what would be a boon to the company and its peers.
“Their appetite for deploying large amounts of scarce capital to aircraft purchases will remain muted for some time,” he said. “The priority will be to repay debt or government subsidies.”
—Thomas Gryta contributed to this article.
Write to Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
There’s certainly plenty of stuff happening this year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Pokémon franchise, including games, merchandise and even music, but it’s fair to say that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company haven’t revealed everything that’s occurring over the next few months – which means people are on the lookout for any hint relating to other Pokémon-related festivities.
Take Nintendo Life reader Ash, for example. He emailed in to point out that, on the Nintendo UK site, a new search category has been added which mentions the Pokémon Mini handheld. In the “Originally For” section, Pokémon Mini now has its own listing, alongside the likes of the Game Boy, GameCube and Super Nintendo.
What’s interesting is that there’s also an “Other Systems” category, which is where you’d expect Nintendo to place the Pokémon Mini – unless, of course, there are plans afoot to resurrect the device in some way.
Look, we realise we’re making a pretty big assumption here, but think about it – the Pokémon Mini is ripe for rediscovery, especially when you consider that many younger fans won’t have been around to experience it the first time.
Given that it’s listed in the “Originally For” category, we’d guess that some kind of digital re-release would be most likely. Perhaps Nintendo has plans to release a Pokémon Mini app for Switch or smartphones which is free to download but allows you to buy individual Pokémon Mini games for a small fee, like Capcom Arcade Stadium?
In case you’re unaware of what Pokémon Mini is, it’s a small Tamagotchi-sized device that was released in 2001 and allowed you to insert tiny cartridges which contain mini-games. Costing around $40 (£30 in the UK) and with software that was around $20 / £15 a pop, it had the potential to be a massive success, but it perhaps didn’t sell as well as Nintendo had hoped and quickly faded from view – something which could potentially be attributed to the fact that it launched in the same year as the Game Boy Advance.
Only ten games were ever produced for the Pokémon Mini, each one having a Pokémon theme, so it would make an ideal digital collection for Switch.
Is this wishful thinking on our part? Let us know what you think by posting a comment below.
Facebook is building a smartwatch as part of its ongoing hardware efforts, according to a new report from The Information. The device is said to be an Android-based smartwatch, though the report does not say whether Facebook intends for the device to run Google’s Wear OS. It also says Facebook is working on building its own operating system for hardware devices and that future iterations of the wearable may run that software instead.
The smartwatch would have messaging, health, and fitness features, the report says, and would join Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality headsets and Portal video chat devices as part of the social network’s growing hardware ecosystem. Facebook is also working on branded Ray-Ban smart glasses to come out later this year as part of its ongoing Project Aria initiative, an augmented reality project the company has been working on for some time now. Facebook declined to comment.
The social networking giant’s hardware ambitions are no secret. The company has more than 6,000 employees working on various augmented and virtual reality projects and as part of existing hardware divisions like Oculus and Portal, as well as experimental initiatives under its Facebook Reality Labs division, Bloomberg reported last month. And although Facebook has not expressed a strong interest in health and fitness devices in the past, the company does have a track record in wearables with its Oculus headsets and forthcoming smart glasses.
Facebook also acquired the neural interface startup CTRL-Labs in 2019. CTRL-Labs specialized in building wireless input mechanisms, including devices that could transmit electrical signals from the brain to computing devices without the need for traditional touchscreen or physical button inputs. The startup’s intellectual property and ongoing research may factor into whatever wearables Facebook builds in the future — including a smartwatch, smart glasses, or future Oculus headsets.
Update February 12th, 6:22PM ET: Noted that Facebook declined to comment.
If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member. If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will launch SpaceX’s 18th batch of approximately 60 Starlink broadband satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.
Credit: Spaceflight Now
Spaceflight Now Members can watch a live view of the Falcon 9 rocket on pad 39A. SpaceX’s live webcast will be available on this page for everyone beginning around 15 minutes before launch.
If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member. If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.
