Plus, Olive Garden-parent Darden said its same-store sales have nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, Elon Musk said SpaceX’s Starlink will go public when its cash flow is more predictable, and jobless claims came in above expectations.
Stocks were higher at the open on Thursday with the Dow adding 60 points, or nearly 0.2%. The S&P 500 gained 0.3%, while the Nasdaq traded 0.6% higher.
Luminar Technologies shares are up nearly 9% this morning after Volvo said it is integrating the company’s lidar system on the automaker’s upcoming electric flagship SUV making it the first major carmaker to integrate the technology as standard equipment on a vehicle. “Volvo Cars is and always has been a leader in safety. It will now define the next level of car safety,” said Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson. “By having this hardware as standard, we can continuously improve safety features over the air and introduce advanced autonomous drive systems, reinforcing our leadership in safety.” Luminar CEO Austin Russell noted, “This is the first time it’s being standardized, but it certainly won’t be the last. This is something that will really help set the stage in ushering in the whole next wave of safety. I think it’s going to kick off a huge trend of growth across the board from that safety perspective.”
Olive Garden-parent Darden Restaurants is up more than 3% at the time of writing after the company reported that its fiscal fourth quarter same-store sales nearly returned to 2019 levels as COVID restrictions eased across the nation. Darden reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.03 on revenue of $2.28 billion, versus analysts estimates for earnings per share of $1.79 on revenue of $2.19 billion. Net sales rose 79.5% to $2.28 billion in the quarter, while same-store sales rose 90.4% year-over-year. “Upscale fine dining is performing well above where we thought it would be,” CEO Gene Lee said to analysts. “And it’s coming back very quickly.”
Elon Musk said SpaceX’s satellite broadband service Starlink will go public once its cash flow is more predictable. “Going public sooner than that would be very painful,” Musk said in a tweet. “Will do my best to give long-term Tesla shareholders preference.” SpaceX has about 1,500 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, with the satellites able to deliver internet service when combined with a receiver from SpaceX. A publicly traded stock for Starlink would be a far bigger deal than the various small-cap space startups that have listed recently by merging with SPACs. Musk added that revenue predictability is “a few years” away.
BuzzFeed announced it plans to go public via a SPAC merger. The media company is merging with 890 Fifth Avenue Partners, and is targeting a $1.5 billion valuation. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, after which BuzzFeed will trade under the ticker symbol “BZFD” on the Nasdaq. “With today’s announcement, we’re taking the next step in BuzzFeed’s evolution, bringing capital and additional experience to our business,” said CEO Jonah Peretti. TV ad tech company Innovid also announced it is going public in a SPAC merger with ION Acquisition Corp. 2 Ltd., in a deal that implies a valuation of around $1.3 billion for Innovid.
And weekly jobless claims again came in above expectations. The Labor Department reported total filings of 411,000 for the week ended June 19, while economists expected a reading of 380,000. Continuing claims for ongoing state benefits, which runs a week behind the headline number, fell by 144,000 in the week ended June 12 to 3.4 million. “Claims are noisy, and the weekly seasonal adjustments are unreliable,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “We expect new lows for initial claims in July; letting people go in increasing numbers now makes no sense as the economy rebounds.”
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Sellas Life Sciences Group Inc (NASDAQ: SLS): Sellas Life Sciences announced today encouraging updated clinical data from a Phase 1 investigator-sponsored clinical trial of its lead clinical candidate, galinpepimut-S (GPS), combined with the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with macroscopic (measurable) deposits of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). “Considering the overall poor prognosis in this particular clinical setting, these preliminary data suggest that the combination of GPS with the PD1 inhibitor nivolumab may provide meaningful clinical benefit to patients with MPM. Surprisingly, the only sarcomatoid mesothelioma patient enrolled, who was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, experienced a survival of 25 months and is still alive,” Sellas CEO Angelos Stergiou, M.D., Sc.D. h.c. said in a press release. “Patients treated with GPS plus nivolumab combination therapy appear to be surviving significantly longer than expected. We believe that this could potentially be due to the persistence of a residual cellular immunity-mediated antitumor effect with this immunotherapy combination. Studying additional patients along with longer follow-up of existing patients will hopefully provide further clarity on these data, which we expect to review over the next six months as the study progresses.”