(Bloomberg) -- Follow Bloomberg on LINE messenger for all the business news and analysis you need.The owner of one of Vietnam’s biggest rice exporters, Nguyen Quang Hoa, can only watch as 500 containers of sticky rice stranded in a port container yard for a month slowly degrades.He’s furloughed 400 factory workers, but his losses keep growing. If he doesn’t ship the 12,500 tons of rice soon, he’s worried his Chinese clients will reject it, and his company will be forced to default on $13 million in bank loans.“We may have to throw away all the sticky rice, and spend more money getting rid of it,” said Hoa, director and founder of Duong Vu Co. “My company is teetering on the edge of collapse.”Hoa is one of more than 100 traders in Vietnam hurt by a government measure last month to restrict shipments on concerns that global demand will spike as the...
AT&T (T) has released soft results for the first quarter of 2020, but nonetheless reassured investors that it has sufficient free cash flow to support its dividend payout. Shares fell 2% in Wednesday’s trading, bringing T’s year-to-date loss to 25%.Most notably, revenue declined 4.6% year-over-year, 2% worse than expected, mostly due to lower growth at WarnerMedia and Latin America. The company also posted EBITDA 1.7% below consensus, and EPS of $0.84 a penny below.Meanwhile capex of $4.97B came in 2.8% above consensus, while FCF of $3.90B was 24% below. However, AT&T did add 163,000 postpaid phone subscribers, doubling from 80,000 in the same period last year.“The COVID pandemic had a 5 cents per share impact on our first quarter,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO. “We have a strong cash position, a strong balance sheet, and our core businesses are solid and continue to generate good free cash flow —...
Underlying sales across Asia, the Middle East and Russia, fell 3.7%, as lockdowns in the quarter restricted restaurant visits and shopping in China and led to factory shutdowns that halted production in India. In Europe, Turkey and Latin America, Unilever's 3 billion euro ($3.2 billion) ice cream business was hit by national efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, deterring distributors in holiday destinations from buying stock. "Many of our classic out-of-home retailers like leisure sites, travel hubs, beaches and tourist destinations were closed," Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said on a call....
Dubbed "DARE-19", AstraZeneca said on Thursday that the study will assess if Farxiga can reduce the risk of death from serious complications and organ failure in such patients. "AstraZeneca is committed to finding new solutions to fight COVID-19 by investigating the application of our new and existing medicines," Mene Pangalos, Executive VP of biopharmaceuticals at the company, said. While existing medications being trialled include cancer drugs and immunotherapies, some research shows that patients with existing heart conditions are at a high risk of developing COVID-19 complications, including heart failure....
Shares in biopharma Immunomedics (IMMU) soared 29% in Wednesday’s after-market trading following an early FDA approval for Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan) in triple-negative breast cancer. The drug is approved for patients who have already received two other lines of therapy for metastatic disease.The decision had been expected on the PDUFA date of June 2nd, so the announcement took investors and analysts by surprise.Previously, in January 2019, IMMU received a CRL (complete response letter) from the FDA on its first filing attempt seeking accelerated approval for the drug.“The issues related to approvability in the CRL were exclusively focused on Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control matters and no new clinical or preclinical data need to be generated” said Michael Pehl, President and CEO of Immunomedics at the time.Following the latest news Piper Sandler’s Joseph Catanzaro bumped his IMMU price target up from $30 to $40 and reiterated his buy rating on the stock.Although the FDA approval includes a...
