Plus, AMC shares are down as movie theaters close with no big releases until the end of this year, Bristol-Myers Squibb is buying MyoKardia, and Nvidia is building a $52 million supercomputer for Cambridge.
Stocks were higher to start Monday with the Dow adding 350 points, or 1.3%. The S&P 500 gained 1.3%, while the Nasdaq rose 1.7%.
President Donald Trump remains hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical this morning following his COVID-19 diagnosis, and some confusion still remains over his condition and when he will be returning to work and his reelection campaign. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said this morning that Trump improved overnight and is ready to return to a normal schedule, with the decision to release him coming as soon as this afternoon. However, experts question whether releasing the president today might be premature. “The president is not our of the woods… We know this infection can be very stealthy and… kind of fake you out, because you can do well for several days and then suddenly crash,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, adding that releasing Trump early “would not be a good idea. Let’s be conservative and take it a day at a time.”
Tweeting from Walter Reed, Trump this weekend pressed for another round of pandemic stimulus to jolt the U.S. recovery, saying the nation “wants and needs” more fiscal aid. Still, Democrats and Republicans still remain far apart on how much of a boost to provide and what a new aid bill should target. The House passed Democrats’ $2.2 trillion package late last week, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proposed a $1.6 trillion plan in response. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that talks on a new stimulus deal have sped “up in the last few days,” though he did not hint to how a new package would be received in the Senate. Analysts say Trump’s illness raises the likelihood for fresh stimulus, with Evercore ISI’s Sarah Bianchi writing in a note that Trump’s COVID diagnosis “rapidly shifted the political environment,” adding that “the chances for a stimulus deal have actually increased as it refocuses the conversation on the virus and gives Pelosi more leeway to worry less about the election implications of passing a bill.”
AMC Entertainment shares are down more than 11% after its biggest rival decided to close its movie theaters in response to disappointing box office results and more postponed blockbusters, including the new James Bond title. Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinema, will close its U.S. and U.K. theaters this week, leaving as many as 45,000 workers unemployed, with CEO Mooky Greidinger saying the theaters could be closed for more than two months. MGM said on Friday that it has postponed James Bond flick “No Time to Die”—which was previously slated to debut until April 2021, and Universal’s “F9,” part of the Fast & the Furious franchise, which was scheduled to come out on the same day as “No Time to Die,” has been moved to May 28, 2021. The changes means theaters will have no major movies for adults until the end of this year, when “Dune” and “Wonder Woman 1984” are set to premiere.
Bristol-Myers Squibb said it will buy MyoKardia for around $13 billion, the company said this morning. The acquisition will bolster BMY’s portfolio of heart disease treatments as it seeks to reduce some of its dependence on cancer drugs. With the deal, Bristol Myers gains mavacamten, an experimental heart disease therapy with blockbuster potential being tested for treating obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. “I think it is a typical acquisition premium for our sales expectations for mavacamten as we had estimates in the initial (and lowest risk) indication of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy of about $2.5 billion by 2026,” said Wedbush analyst David Nierengarten.
Nvidia shares are up 4% this morning after it pledged to build a $52 million supercomputer in Cambridge, England, just weeks after announcing its bid to buy British rival Arm Holdings for $40 billion. The supercomputer, called “Cambridge-1” is intended for artificial intelligence research in health care and will be unveiled by Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang at the company’s GTC 2020 conference today. “Tackling the world’s most pressing challenges in health care requires massively powerful computing resources to harness the capabilities of AI,” Huang will say in his keynote. “The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a hub of innovation for the U.K., and further the groundbreaking work being done by the nation’s researchers in critical healthcare and drug discovery.”
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Immunogen Inc (NASDAQ: IMGN): Immunogen shares are up more than 8% this morning after the biotech announced that the FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for its IMGN632 for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN). “We are pleased FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for IMGN632, our novel CD123-targeted ADC, as it underscores the urgent need for effective and well-tolerated treatments for patients with this rare and aggressive cancer,” said Mark Enyedy, ImmunoGen’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “We look forward to continuing to work with FDA to further define the development path for IMGN632 in BPDCN, in addition to pursuing our ongoing evaluation of IMGN632 in AML and other hematological malignancies.”