Wall Street Breakfast

Pfizer working on new weight-loss drug mechanism

Weight loss drug candidate will differ from popular GLP-1s. (0:16) Tesla recalls thousands of Cybertrucks. (3:09) Hedge funds keep cashing in on tech. (3:55)

Show Notes
Airbus's stock falls more than 9% after cutting guidance
U.S. consumer confidence pulls back in June, but range-bound for past two years

Episode transcripts seekingalpha.com/wsb
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Duration:: 5m
Broadcast on:: 25 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis. Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, June 25th, and I'm your host, Kim Kong, our top story so far. Pfizer CEO Albert Borla said the drugmaker is testing three new weight loss drugs, one of which will have a different mechanism from currently available and popular GLP-1 agonists. Borla did not reveal the exact mechanism of the third drug, but mentioned the other two would be GLP-1 candidates, similar to Novo Nordisk's Wigovii, which recently received approval in China. The chief executive also said Pfizer plans to release data later in 2024, showing progress in development of one of the weight loss therapy candidates, Denugla-Pron, which will be in pill form. Besides Denugla-Pron, there are other drug candidates in mid-stage development for obesity from Viking Therapeutics, Structured Therapeutics, Altamune, Zealand Pharma, and Amgen. In today's trading, growth stocks are trying to recover from the previous session's losses with the NASDAQ up about half a percent. The conference board said its main measure of consumer confidence came in at 100.4 down slightly from April and right in line with economist forecasts. The present situation index ticked up to 141.5, while the expectations index fell to 73. Anthony and macroeconomist Ian Shepertsen said the drop in the expectations index was driven partly by a decline in the proportion of people expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months to its lowest level since October 2011. But the mean one year ahead inflation expectations fell to 5.3% in June from 5.4% in May and were only marginally above the 2000-19 average 5%, which likely is consistent with near 2% CPI inflation. Accordingly, the Fed will continue to conclude that inflation expectations remain well anchored. And there was mixed numbers for housing prices. The April S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller Home Price Index composite for 20 cities rose 7.2% annually, more than the 7% expected. But the FHFA House Price Index rose 0.2% month on month in April, short of the 0.3% rise expected. Among active stocks in today's session, Airbus fell more than 9% in Paris trading a day after the planemaker reduced its goal for deliveries of commercial aircraft and/financial targets. The decline in its stock price erased about $10 billion from Airbus' market value, leaving it at around 107.9 billion euros. UBS upgraded cloud flare to neutral from sell and raised the price target on the stock to $82.76, following some global traffic manager momentum, better secure access service edge checks, first-quarter guide down, and evaluation derating, analysts think that shares capture a more balanced risk reward. And shares of Carnival rose after the cruise operator reported results that beat on the top and bottom lines. For the full year, Carnival expects adjusted EBITDA of about $5.83 billion better than March guidance by around $200 million. In other news of note, Tesla is recalling 11,688 Cybertrucks due to a windshield wiper failure that can reduce visibility. The NHTSA recall includes all 2024 model year Cybertruck vehicles manufactured from November 13, 2023 to June 6, 2024. On the affected vehicles, the front windshield wiper motor controller may stop functioning due to electrical overstress to the gate driver component. Separately, the company is also recalling 11,383 units of certain 2024 Cybertruck vehicles as a trim in the trunk bed could have been improperly attached. A loose applique can detach from the vehicle, creating a road hazard for following motorists and increasing the risk of a crash. And in the Wall Street research corner, hedge funds continue to cash in on tech games. As concerns about weakness in the semiconductor sector grew, hedge funds have continued to sell chip stocks and tech overall for most of the last month. Goldman's prime brokerage, said Infotech, was the most net sold sector last week, driven by short and long sales. Infotech has been net sold in four of the last five weeks. They said most sub-stectors were net sold on the week, led in notional terms by semis and semi-equipment long sales, tech hardware, where there are short sales, and communications equipment long and short sales, which outweighed net buying and software and IT services. But Infotech is still among the most notionally net bought US sector on the prime book year to date, they added. While selling tech, Appetite grew for financials, with those stocks net bought by hedge funds for the second straight week, and at the fastest pace since December. That was driven by long buying and short covering to a lesser extent. That's all for today's Wall Street lunch. Look for links for stories in the show notes section. Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at seekingoffa.com/wsp, and for a wealth of coverage on stocks and ETFs, go to seekingoffa.com/subscriptions. [BLANK_AUDIO]