(Bloomberg) -- No one is feeling the pain of an oil collapse more than the shale producers. Except, perhaps, their suppliers.Take Stacy Locke, chief executive officer for Pioneer Energy Services Corp. Locke says he had no choice but to abandon drilling in the Bakken shale basin after roughly 20 years there as plunging oil prices slashed activity, and a major customer in the region -- Whiting Petroleum Corp. -- went bankrupt. The end result of a tough year for oil: Pioneer will lose the last 6 rigs it has in the Bakken, with each one ending jobs for 20 or so workers.Since the start of 2019, the oilfield services sector has lost almost 50,000 jobs, or about 13% of its workforce. Meanwhile, the falloff in fracking -- the technology used to shake loose oil from shale -- is forecast to face its worst year ever with at least half of all...
As part of the urgent global race to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, Novavax (NVAX) is due to commence Phase 1 testing for its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, within the coming weeks.According to the statement, this is the third confirmed global Covid-19 vaccine trial and the first in Australia.“The urgent global race to develop a vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemic drove our rapid identification and selection of an optimal, highly immunogenic vaccine candidate,” said Stanley C. Erck, President and CEO of Novavax.The Phase 1 in-human trial of NVX-CoV2373 is expected to begin in mid-May with preliminary immunogenicity and safety results in July, and will take place at Nucleus Network’s Melbourne and Brisbane clinics.“Novavax’s early development efforts on vaccines for two other recent coronavirus epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), along with prior work on Ebola – allows them to leverage their understanding of coronaviruses and adapt their research to create...
(Bloomberg) -- Over two decades, Richard Liu built a tiny suburban electronics outlet into China’s second largest e-commerce empire. Now, the billionaire entrepreneur is retreating from the spotlight and entrusting fast-rising lieutenant Xu Lei with steering JD.com Inc. through the greatest crisis since its founding.Liu is gradually ceding more control to Xu, who runs JD’s core retail operation and devised its answer to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s widely celebrated Singles’ Day phenomenon. Xu has led JD’s delegation to Davos since 2019 and replaced Liu as head of a key subsidiary this month, burnishing his credentials as presumptive heir.In an exclusive interview, the 45-year-old sketched out how JD’s business withstood the initial shock of Covid-19 and where it plans to go in the future. In five years, the flagship JD.com website and platform should contribute less than half of the company’s revenue as consumers gravitate toward social media town squares like Tencent...
GoPro Inc (GPRO) shed 14% in Wednesday’s trading after the company pre-announced Q1 revenue of $119 million, down 51% year-over-year, and far below its prior guidance of $140-160 million.The action camera maker reported adjusted losses in the middle of its projected range of $0.30-$0.40 per share, with cash of $125 million and channel inventory down by 30%. However with direct to consumer up significantly in the quarter, the average selling price (ASP) increased 23% sequentially to $350.“For a consumer electronic company with a non-essential product levered towards tourism and getting outside … the numbers were ugly” stated Oppenheimer analyst Andrew Uerkwitz.But he is encouraged by the fact that GoPro management is doing something many others aren’t doing: accelerating its business plan.For GoPro that involves accelerating its strategy towards a direct-to-consumer model, which ‘makes sense’ given that Core GoPro users are already mostly digital.This will enable the company to restructure its sales and...
