Plus, President Biden and congressional Democrats are moving forward with stimulus, Pfizer said it can deliver 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. by May, and Uber is buying Drizly.
Stocks were higher to start Tuesday with the Dow rising 538 points, or 1.8%. The S&P 500 added 1.5%, while the Nasdaq gained 1.2%.
GameStop shares are sinking further today, with shares falling nearly 56% to just under $100 at the time of writing. The stock has now fallen around 70% since Friday’s close after last week’s epic run higher. “It looks like the unwind of the short squeeze, where prices will start to reflect economic reality again,” said Maarten Geerdink, head of European equities at NN Investment Partners. Other Reddit trades—including AMC Entertainment, Koss, Nokia, Express, and BlackBerry—are all also coming back down to earth as the squeeze trade loses momentum and enthusiasm.
President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have signaled they are intent on passing a large pandemic relief bill, potentially without Republican support, even after Biden met with 10 Republican senators yesterday to discuss their smaller stimulus proposal. While the senators in attendance described the meeting as “excellent” with “a very productive exchange of views,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had emphasized in the meeting that Congress had to act urgently and “boldly” and had pointed out many areas of disagreement with the Republicans. Biden “will not slow down work on this urgent crisis response, and will not settle for a package that fails to meet the moment,” Psaki said. Congressional Democrats have begun to set the stage to pass a stimulus bill through reconciliation, which would allow them to pass a package with a simple majority in the House and Senate.
As new daily cases of the coronavirus have fallen below 150,000 for the first time since mid-November, Pfizer said it plans to deliver 200 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. by May, months earlier than its initial forecast of July. Pfizer, which developed its vaccine in partnership with BioNTech, also said it can potentially deliver 2 billion doses globally by the end of this year. The company also said that it is “prepared to respond” if a variant of the virus demonstrates evidence that it is resistant to its vaccine, adding that patients will “likely need to boost regularly to maintain immune response and to counter emerging variant strains.”
Uber shares are up more than 7% this morning after the company announced that it is acquiring alcohol-delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion in stock and cash. Once the acquisition is completed, Drizly’s marketplace will be integrated with the Uber Eats app, and will also remain a standalone app as well. The deal is expected to close within the first half of 2021. Drizly is the leading on-demand alcohol delivery service in the U.S. and is currently available in 1,400 cities. “Wherever you want to go and whatever you need to get, our goal at Uber is to make people’s lives a little bit easier. That’s why we’ve been branching into new categories like groceries, prescriptions and, now, alcohol,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a press release, adding Drizly co-founder and CEO “Cory [Rellas] and his amazing team have built Drizly into an incredible success story, profitably growing gross bookings more than 300 percent year-over-year. By bringing Drizly into the Uber family, we can accelerate that trajectory by exposing Drizly to the Uber audience and expanding its geographic presence into our global footprint in the years ahead.”
And in earnings news, Exxon said it lost $20.1 billion in its most recently completed quarter, its fourth-straight quarter of losses, as it earned only $0.03 per share on revenue of $46.54 billion during the quarter. “The past year presented the most challenging market conditions ExxonMobil has ever experienced,” said Chairman and CEO Darren Woods. “We’ve built a flexible capital program that is robust to a range of market scenarios and focused on our highest-return opportunities to drive greater cash flow, cover the dividend, and increase the earnings potential of our business in the near and longer term.” UPS, on the other hand, reported better-than-expected revenue and profits over the busy holiday shopping season. The shipping company’s revenue jumped 21% to $24.9 billion in its fourth quarter as its domestic package division saw a 17.4% increase in year-over-year revenue. “Looking at the fourth quarter, our results were strong and considerably better than we expected,” said CEO Carol Tome. “This is the highest quarterly operating profit in the company’s history, with record profit produced in each segment.”
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Zomedica Pharmaceuticals Corp (OTC: ZOM): Zomedica shares are up nearly 8% over the last week after the company announced it has signed an agreement with Miller Veterinary Supply for the distribution of its TRUFORMA diagnostic platform. “We could not be happier about signing this distribution agreement with such a reputable and highly experienced organization,” said Robert Cohen, Chief Executive Officer of Zomedica. “We believe that the principals of Miller share the same commitment to quality, customer service, and value that we hope to be hallmarks of the TRUFORMA™ line of products. We look forward to serving the veterinary community together as we introduce TRUFORMA into the marketplace.”