AMC Shares Jump As Investor Shrug Off Mudrick Stock Sale

Plus, a cyberattack on JBS shutdown its U.S. beef plants yesterday, Dogecoin is up more than 30% after Coinbase announced it will list the crypto on its Pro platform on Thursday, and Etsy is buying resale app Depop.

Stocks were slightly higher at the open on Wednesday with the Dow gaining 39 points, or 0.1%. The S&P 500 added 0.1%, while the Nasdaq rose less than 0.1%.

AMC shares opened at a new all-time high this morning, jumping as much as 28% just after market open. The jump comes as investors shrug off the news that Mudrick Capital sold all of its stock in the company for a profit just hours after AMC disclosed the hedge fund’s $230 million investment. Mudrick said the decision to sell came after the firm concluded that AMC’s stock was overvalued. “Our market capitalization, as implied by various trading prices, currently reflects valuations that diverge significantly from those seen prior to recent volatility and that are significantly higher than our market capitalization immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” AMC executives said in Tuesday’s Securities and Exchange filing. “And to the extent these valuations reflect trading dynamics unrelated to our financial performance or prospects, purchasers of our Class A common stock could incur substantial losses if there are declines in market prices driven by a return to earlier valuations.”

A cyberattack on JBS SA, the world’s largest meat producer, forced the shutdown of all of the company’s U.S. beef plants yesterday, wiping out output from facilities that supply nearly a quarter of American supplies. JBS said this morning that it has made “significant progress” to resolve the cyberattack that hit its global operations and will have the “vast majority” of its plants operational today. “Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat,” said JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira. Truist analyst Jake Bartlett compared the situation to a fire at a Tyson Foods plant in 2019 that impacted 5% to 6% of U.S. supply. “JBS plant shutdown impacts a greater portion of supply, but the supply disruption is likely for a much shorter time period (the Holcomb plant re-opened in ~5 months),” Bartlett said in a note. “That said, this is a bad time for a supply disruption as spiking demand is already stressing the supply chain.”

Dogecoin is up nearly 32% this morning after Coinbase announced that it will list the cryptocurrency on its Pro platform on Thursday. The move pushes the meme coin to a market cap of more than $54 billion, making it the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market value. “One of the most common requests we receive from customers is to be able to trade more assets on our platform,” Coinbase said in a blog post. “Per the terms of our listing process, we anticipate supporting more assets that meet our standards over time. … Coinbase continues to explore support for new digital assets.”

Tesla shares are down nearly 3% today after the company said that it is recalling 5,974 of is electric vehicles over concerns that their brake caliper bolts might loosen, potentially causing a loss of tire pressure and increase the risk of a crash. Cars part of the voluntary recall include certain 2019 – 2021 Model 3 vehicles and 2020 – 2021 Model Y vehicles. Tesla said it’s not aware of any crash or injury resulting from the possible defect, but will inspect and tighten or replace the caliper bolts as necessary, free of charge. The recall follows a recall from February involving 36,126 Model S and Model X vehicles in China and 134,951 in the U.S. over touch-screen failures. 

And Etsy announced that it is buying the secondhand fashion app Depop for $1.62 billion. Depop boasts roughly 30 million registered users across 150 countries, and Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said the company is “thrilled” to be adding what it believes to be the “resale home of Gen Z consumers.” “Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace with a passionate community, a highly-differentiated offering of unique items, and we believe significant potential to further scale,” Silverman said in a statement. “We see significant opportunities for shared expertise and growth synergies across what will now be a tremendous ‘house of brands’ portfolio of individually distinct, and very special, ecommerce brands.”

Stocks We’re Watching

Lineage Cell Therapeutics Inc (OTC: LCTX): Lineage Cell Therapeutics shares jumped nearly 27% yesterday after the biotech announced the restoration of retinal tissue was observed in two additional patients enrolled in the company’s Phase 1/2a study of its lead product candidate, OpRegen. “To our knowledge, these three patients represent the only examples of an experimental treatment for dry AMD demonstrating a reduction, rather than attenuating further expansion, of an area of atrophy in humans,” Brian M. Culley, Lineage CEO, said in a press release. “Now that these findings of retinal restoration have been confirmed in multiple patients over clinically meaningful time periods, we believe we are in a position to pioneer a new paradigm for how we and others evaluate and treat atrophic AMD. Notably, 75% of patients who received broad coverage of OpRegen across the area of GA exhibited evidence of restoration, indicating that clinical benefits may be improved by a more central and complete placement of OpRegen cells across the atrophic area.”


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