| |  | TOGETHER WITH |  | | | Good morning.
Walmart is adding drone delivery in five states — Arizona, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia — a year after introducing the service in its home state of Arkansas.
Some 4 million households willing to pay a $3.99 delivery fee will be able to summon ten pounds worth of goods in half an hour or less. After a bloodbath of a week, with $550 billion in market value shorn from consumer stocks — and Walmart seeing its worst trading day since the 1987 Black Monday crash — investors will be happy to know the drones can deliver Tylenol. | | | • | | The stock market is flirting with bear market territory, and so company insiders are, naturally, buying their own depleted shares. | | • | | The monkeypox outbreak is giving a sudden boost to the Danish firm that produces the lone FDA-recognized jab for the virus. | | • | | Softbank bets on a video ecommerce platform. | | | | |  | Stock Markets | With a Ground-Level View of Earnings, Insiders Seen Buying Discounted Stock | | The S&P 500 has fallen nearly 19% this year, and even briefly took a stroll through bear market territory on Friday. Current forecasts ranging from “tough months ahead” to “tougher months ahead” present a fair encapsulation of the widespread macroeconomic pessimism.
True, stock valuations are way down, but company insiders (aka executives and board members) aren’t acting as if the sky is falling. Instead, with the advantage of their hi-res view into company financials, many are going shopping. | Business Insider | | For all the talk of a possible recession, insiders at S&P 500 firms have kept relatively calm. Something to keep in mind: when more insiders bought shares than sold in 2015, 2018, and 2020, it signaled the bottom of the bear market. And so the current trend may be hinting at a quiet confidence in valuations — in the long term, at least: | • | | Over 1,100 corporate insiders have bought shares in their company this month. The number of buyers is on track to exceed that of sellers for the first time since March 2020, according to data provider The Washington Service. High-profile executive buyers in May include the CEOs of Charles Schwab, Starbucks, Intel, and GM. | | • | | Why are they holding their stake, and even upping it? According to Bloomberg, if current forecasts play out, S&P 500 companies will make a combined $248 per share in 2023. That would mean the index as a whole is trading at 16 times profits — a bargain by historical standards. | | | | “It is a function of investors [operating] at the ‘30,000-foot level’ or ‘macro’ whereas insiders are functioning at the ‘boots on the ground’, company-fundamentals level,” Craig Callahan, CEO of Icon Advisers, told Bloomberg. “We believe the company-fundamentals view is usually correct.”
Shades of Martha: Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler has said the agency is examining ways to tighten insider trading rules. A University of Pennsylvania study found that after insiders sold $50 million in shares on a single day, their company’s stock underperformed peers by 3% in the next month and 6% over the next six months. | | | | | | Pharma | Dozens of Countries are in the Market for Smallpox Vaccines Amid Monkeypox Outbreaks | | There’s no widespread pandemic. There’s no need to panic-buy toilet paper or resubscribe to Netflix. Experts say it doesn’t spread through respiratory means and is nowhere nearly as contagious as Covid. But monkeypox is, for lack of a better term, the latest epidemiological elephant in the room.
The unusual, though limited, outbreak around the world has the phone ringing off the hook at the Danish firm that manufactures the FDA’s only approved monkeypox vaccine. Bavarian Nordic says dozens of countries have inquired about its Jynneos shot. | Down to Monkeypox Business | | There is no monkeypox-specific vaccine, but, according to the World Health Organization, Jynneos — originally developed for smallpox — has proven 85% effective at preventing the disease. This is why the FDA approved it as a treatment for monkeypox in 2019.
At least 17 countries — including the US, UK, France, and Australia — have reported monkeypox cases this year. As of Saturday, the WHO confirmed 92 cases of the virus, which is usually mild and associated with fever and bumpy rashes. That was enough to create immediate business for Bavarian Nordic, but there’s plenty of reason to believe this boost, like the outbreak, will be short-lived: | • | | Germany, which has reported five cases of monkeypox, said Tuesday it was ordering 40,000 doses of Jynneos as a precaution. “We feel confident based on discussions that we’ll be able to meet the demand in a relatively short period of time,” Paul Chaplin, Bavarian Nordic’s CEO, told The Wall Street Journal, adding that dozens of countries have inquired about orders. | | • | | Bavarian Nordic's stock is up 17% in the past month, likely due to the wave of news about the virus. So far this year, however, it's down 35% — pretty much in line with the broader biotech sector: the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF is down 41% this year. | | | | America First: The US, where there is one confirmed and six suspected cases, was well ahead of the world in building up stockpiles of Jynneos. As part of its strategic-defense reserve against biological attacks, America has access to 1.4 million doses of the jab and another 100 million doses of ACAM2000, a similar vaccine that officials say could be used to prevent monkeypox. Sometimes, hoarding does work. | | | | | | SPONSORED BY loop | Business Owner? Here’s a No Brainer | We’re going to keep this simple. If you own (or work at) a public facing business — think bar, restaurant, dentist office, or even exotic pet store — Loop Media wants to both send you cash and keep your customers entertained. No, really. Here’s How it Works: On all your existing in-store screens, Loop provides entertaining content (at no cost to you) including music videos, sports highlights, and even live performances — meaning you can ditch your cable package. In exchange for Loop’s content exposure in your storefront, they’ll send you cold hard cash. The net-net is happier, more engaged customers and a fatter bottom line. Who doesn’t love that? Get started with Loop TV right here. | | | | | | Startups | Shoppable-Video Startup Lands Funding Round Led by Softbank | | Names have meaning. Parents who give their son the name Alexander surely want him to be great; the hope for a girl named Helen is that she will be beautiful. It's the same idea with startups, and it's a real bang when the name founders give their baby really works out.
On Tuesday, Fireworks, a tech startup that aims to help companies conduct live-streaming and other video ecommerce events, did just that, convincing SoftBank and other investors that it's worth $750 million in a $150 million Series B round. | Spreading Like Wildfire | | Live-streamed shopping events — a QVC for the internet — have long been popular in China, but remain a relatively novel concept in the US despite tech titans Amazon, Meta, and Google’s YouTube all offering live-streaming shopping tools. For SoftBank, which led the round via its influential Vision Fund 2, it’s Fireworks’ underlying tech that makes it an attractive bet.
The startup’s services allow companies to forgo streaming and hosting licenses normally needed to host interactive shoppable video on their website — untethering them from third-party platforms, and making it easier for consumers to complete purchases all in one virtual space. As the appetite for video shopping continues to grow, Fireworks has garnered a large, high-profile clientele: | • | | Fireworks now boasts 900 companies using its services, headlined by grocery group Albertsons, which began using the platform last October. | | • | | Live-streamed ecommerce accounts for just 0.1% of all online sales in North America, i.e. less than $6 billion, per TechCrunch. Analysts expect the market to explode to $35 billion by 2024; in China, sales are already poised to hit $423 billion this year. | | | | This is the second major funding round in as many years for Fireworks. In March 2021, the company raised $55 million at a valuation of $230 million, meaning the startup has doubled its worth in a calendar year. How’s that for a bang? | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | Snap fell 40% Tuesday after issuing a warning about its earnings, dragging other social media stocks down with it. | | • | | The Bank of England said lenders and insurers are facing a $437 billion exposure in the next three decades from climate change. | | • | | Inflation can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. While broader equity markets are swinging violently at the whims of central bankers, shrewd investors are pouring capital into an entirely new asset class: events contracts. With Kalshi — for the first time ever — investors can trade specifically based on their view of concrete events. Will a recession happen by Q2 2022? Will inflation exceed 0.6% in May? Explore Kalshi and trade on your beliefs.* *Partner | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Brian Boyle. | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
