Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Here we go!!!!!!!! 3s printing,,,,,, Blue Sky’s ahead now...... $$$$$$$$$$$$$
Yep, break 3 s and it’s NEXT Leg UP,,,, WTRH looking STRONG today $$$$$$$$$$$
Just warming up... plenty of room to go,,,,, MRNA is in beast mode $$$$$$$$$
Following the latest results, Moderna's eleven analysts are now forecasting revenues of US$88.3m in 2020. This would be a substantial 68% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Losses are forecast to narrow 2.9% to US$1.46 per share. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$85.8m and losses of US$1.51 per share in 2020. So there seems to have been a moderate uplift in analyst sentiment with the latest consensus release, given the upgrades to both revenue and loss per share forecasts for this year.
It will come as no surprise to learn thatthe analysts have increased their price target for Moderna 29% to US$59.83 on the back of these upgrades. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Moderna at US$83.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$37.00. This is a fairly broad spread of estimates, suggesting that analysts are forecasting a wide range of possible outcomes for the business.
Of course, another way to look at these forecasts is to place them into context against the industry itself. One thing stands out from these estimates, which is that Moderna is forecast to grow faster in the future than it has in the past, with revenues expected to grow 68%. If achieved, this would be a much better result than the 57% annual decline over the past year. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 22% per year. Not only are Moderna's revenues expected to improve, it seems that the analysts are also expecting it to grow faster than the wider industry.
The Bottom Line
The most important thing to take away is that the analysts reconfirmed their loss per share estimates for next year. Pleasantly, they also upgraded their revenue estimates, and their forecasts suggest the business is expected to grow faster than the wider industry. There was also a nice increase in the price target, with the analysts clearly feeling that the intrinsic value of the business is improving.
With that in mind, we wouldn't be too quick to come to a conclusion on Moderna. Long-term earnings power is much more important than next year's profits. We have forecasts for Moderna going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here.
The one way that struggling cannabis producer Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB) can turn its fortunes around in a hurry is with a strong earnings report. But that may be easier said than done as there are many checkboxes that investors will want to tick off and review when Aurora releases its third-quarter results on May 14.
Here are six items that investors will want to keep an eye out for and assess before making an investment decision on the troubled pot stock:
1. Its cash balance
When Aurora released its second-quarter results on Feb. 13, it reported cash and cash equivalents totaling 156.3 million Canadian dollars as of Dec. 31, 2019. That was down from CA$172.7 million on June 30, 2019.
Cash is an important consideration for investors, especially with investment bank Ello Capital projecting that many cannabis companies only had a few months before they would run out of it. Aurora was supposedly among the worst cannabis companies, with just a few more months of liquidity left. Where its balance has gone during the past three months will definitely be a key consideration for investors, especially when evaluating the company from a risk standpoint. Without sufficient cash on hand to fund its operations, the company may issue more shares and experience more dilution as a result.
Jars of cannabis flower.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
2. How much cash it's burning through
In conjunction with its cash balance, investors will also want to see that the company isn't burning through lots of cash, either. Aurora could generate cash from selling off assets and helping keep the lights on that way, but that's not a sustainable approach to funding its operations That's why investors should take a close look at how much cash the company's burning through, especially from its operations. Cutting back on growth initiatives and capital spending is a lot easier than cutting back on day-to-day expenses that the company needs to keep operating and producing products.
Cash flow from operating activities is a key number that all cannabis investors should keep an eye out for when reviewing any earnings report since it includes spending that's essential to keep the business going. In Aurora's case, it's even more important given the concerns surrounding the company's liquidity.
3. Whether the COVID-19 pandemic helped or hurt its sales
What was surprising about Q2 for Aurora wasn't just that sales were down by 26% from the first quarter, but that the company was forecasting "modest to no growth" for Q3 as well. The strength of its sales will likely dictate whether or not the stock has a good day or not on earnings day. Growth has been a key reason for the popularity of pot stocks in recent years. The good news for Aurora investors is that the COVID-19 pandemic may have given the stock's sales a boost during the quarter.
In Canada, sales were surging in March amid the pandemic, with customers stockpiling pot. Some Ontario shops saw sales rise by 80% from previous weeks, and the Ontario Cannabis Store saw volumes rise by even more. If Aurora can't achieve better growth than it expected for this quarter, that could be a troubling sign for investors; the pandemic will likely make things worse as more people lose their jobs and may not be able to afford to buy cannabis. A poor showing in Q3 could set the stage for more disappointment later on this year.
4. If value brands are cutting into the company's gross margins
In February, investors learned that Aurora and other cannabis producers -- HEXO and Tilray -- would be launching value brands to compete with the black market. Called "Daily Special," Aurora's brand could help draw in more market share and give its sales a boost this quarter. However, it could come at the cost of lower gross margins. In Q2, Aurora netted 41% of revenue after cost of goods sold and before fair value adjustments to inventory. In the prior year, its gross margin was 52% of net sales.
A lower margin could negate any boost in sales. And at worst, if sales are down, it could lead to less gross profit available to cover the company's operating losses, potentially making the company's net loss bigger this quarter.
5. What improvements (if any) there are in operating expenses
Aurora announced in February that it was eliminating 500 positions to improve its financial performance. In Q2, the company's operating expenses of CA$149.5 million were 14% higher than in Q1 when Aurora incurred operating expenses of $131.1 million. With general and administrative expenses of $70.8 million making up close to half (47%) of Aurora's total operating costs last quarter, investors should expect to see some noticeable cost savings this quarter. If not, it could suggest that management needs to make more cuts and that Aurora has not been aggressive enough in improving its bottom line.
6. How much distortion there is in income and expenses
In Q2, Aurora had CA$1.2 billion worth of other expenses, the bulk of which were related to impairments. Investors should be careful to look at this line item for a couple of reasons. The first is that it can explain an abnormal profit or loss in Q3, as there can be a lot of noise in this section that ends up impacting the bottom line. The second reason is that if impairment charges continue to show up in Q3, this pattern could undermine the reliability of the company's asset values and financials as a whole, which can make it difficult to trust the company's reporting if writedowns become the norm.
Investors should look at these numbers before considering the bottom line
The reason net income isn't on this list is that it can often be misleading for pot stocks, especially if there's a large one-time gain or loss. It can tell a much different story for investors than by focusing on the items listed above. By looking at the key areas noted above, investors will have more context to put the overall results into and can make a better assessment of just how well the company did.
Shares of Aurora have crashed 92% in the past 12 months, which is much worse than the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, which is down 70% during the same period. Without a strong showing on all of the items above, it'll be difficult for Aurora to turn things around anytime soon. And until that happens, it'll remain a very high-risk investment.
Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) is quite the famous pharmaceutical company these days. Its antiviral remdesivir is the hot drug of the moment due to its apparent success in clinical trials with patients who have COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
A hot drug leads to a lot of interest in a stock, which is the key reason why Gilead's shares have generally been on the rise since the world became reacquainted or initially acquainted with remdesivir (formerly a treatment for Ebola). But I think that as an investment, the company has another very attractive factor that isn't getting quite so much attention -- or any at all.
Two medical professionals conferring in a busy hospital lobby.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
Profit participation
That under-the-radar factor is Gilead's quarterly dividend, which is generous relative to the broader stock market's average dividend, and it's consistent and dependable to boot.
Since the company initiated the investor payout in 2015, it has risen steadily from $0.43 to the present level of $0.68 thanks to its annual raises. At the moment the dividend yield is 3.5%, which compares very favorably to the 2.1% average yield of all S&P 500 stocks (a group which, to be fair, includes numerous companies that don't pay dividends).
As with any dividend investment, though, we have to consider whether Gilead's payout is sustainable. After all, there's little point in buying a stock for its dividend if that payout will be reduced or eliminated -- which is not an unusual occurrence in an economy being rocked by the coronavirus pandemic.
Looking at the company's fundamentals in recent history, it usually lands in the black on an annual basis -- even following a big fall from its peak sales year of 2015, when it ruled the market for hepatitis treatments (though it has lately been recovering on both the top and bottom lines). From that year on, even with some scary drops in sales and net profit, its annual net margin never fell below 18%.
Wide margins typically mean strong cash flow, and that's the case for Gilead. The company's free cash flow isn't at 2015 levels, but it's still quite robust. For full-year 2019, that line item grew a healthy 11% year-over-year to over $8.3 billion. That year the company's total spending on its dividend was $3.2 billion, making the cash dividend payout ratio 39%. So the dividend is, at the very least, sustainable for now.
Assuming Gilead manages to enlarge that free cash flow figure again there's going to be plenty of room for more of those annual dividend raises. At least initially remdesivir won't be a money-spinner, as the company has said it will donate the doses it has on hand. A more promising avenue for growth is the company's HIV drug program, which is stuffed with no fewer than five blockbuster drugs. It also has two treatments in the pipeline, vesatolimod and elipovimab, that could cure HIV entirely.
Another potential blockbuster -- and maybe a multi-faceted one at that -- is immunology drug filgotinib, a rheumatoid arthritis treatment now under priority review by the FDA (it has also been submitted to regulators in Europe and Japan). The global market for rheumatoid arthritis is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. On top of that, filgotinib is being evaluated for other indications such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's Disease.
Power and potential
Of course, Gilead isn't the only game in this town; there are other established, cash-rich pharmaceutical companies that pay reliable dividends.
Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) has been increasing its own payout for decades, to the point where it's a Dividend Aristocrat. Its 2013 spinoff, AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) inherited a place in that celebrated group of stocks and has kept it by raising the distribution on the regular (it's also still the big rheumatoid arthritis player with its Humira). Gilead's 3.5% yield is close to the midpoint of Abbott Labs' 1.6% and AbbVie's 5.5%.
But in my opinion, Gilead has explosive potential immediately in front of it, more so than Abbott Labs, AbbVie, or numerous other dividend payers in Big Pharmaville. Remdesivir aside, Gilead already has a strong portfolio and an excellent pipeline. Meanwhile, the company's solid cash-generating tendencies, its ability to grow, and its high profitability make it a fine stock for income investors.
RIDGEFIELD, Conn., May 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Chefs’ Warehouse, Inc. (CHEF), a premier distributor of specialty food products in the United States, today announced that the Company will present at the virtual BMO Global Farm to Market Conference on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. The presentation will begin at 4:00 p.m. ET.
Investors and interested parties may listen to a webcast of the presentation by visiting the Company’s investor relations website at http://investors.chefswarehouse.com/.
Moderna's (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock has been a fast-mover in the last few weeks as a result of the company's COVID-19 vaccine efforts, funded to the tune of $483 million by the U.S. government.
Investors should know that Moderna's scientific approach to vaccine development is unproven. But its mature technology platform and long-standing collaborations with government institutions and established pharmaceutical companies mean it's well-positioned to thrive in the long-term whether or not its COVID-19 vaccine pans out as hoped.
Moderna was an exciting company before COVID-19
Moderna's technology platform is centered around its ability to quickly produce clinical trial-ready sequences of genetic information. This genetic information is the active ingredient in all of Moderna's products. Then, using the company's patented therapeutic delivery platform, the sequence infiltrates its cellular targets and prompts them to react in the way Moderna envisions.
Unlike similar technologies for drug delivery, Moderna's tech platform is highly reliable and safe at transporting its payload into cells. This means that the company has already overcome a significant scientific and engineering hurdle that its competitors have not. In a nutshell, it also means that the company has a solution in hand and is searching for the right disease problem to solve. There's no guarantee that Moderna will produce a COVID-19 vaccine successfully, but the marginal cost of the attempt will be low either way.
A strand of DNA
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
The same goes for a handful of other diseases that Moderna could consider targeting. By investing so much in its technology platform, Moderna has driven down the cost of pipeline gambles to the point where the company's own literature compares it to running a software program. In other words, Moderna has a dominating strategic advantage among biotechs because it is extremely resilient against pipeline risks.
Moderna's clinical collaborations bolster its chances of success
Moderna has several scientific peers in the COVID-19 vaccine space. However, Moderna has an extensive number of collaborations that strengthened its competitive position long before the pandemic. Merck (NYSE:MRK), AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), Lonza (OTC:LZAGY) and Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) are partners in a handful of different Moderna therapeutic development efforts. In particular, Moderna's 2015 collaboration with Merck pertains directly to developing vaccines for infectious diseases using Moderna's technology platform and Merck's clinical trial expertise. These collaborations ensure that its candidate therapies and candidate vaccines have momentum in the clinical trial process right out of the gate.
Industry partnerships are only half of Moderna's collaboration story. Since 2013, Moderna has also partnered with government institutions like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and later the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for its COVID-19 efforts.
Many of Moderna's peer companies are flush with collaborations in industry, but few have the same level of experience or comfort when dealing with government groups. The company's mixture of long-lasting and high-powered collaborations means that its vaccine development efforts get cash infusions upfront and critical sets of helping hands during the clinical trial process, increasing the chances of success.
Beginning on May 7, the process began to deliver cases of the drug to Connecticut (30 cases), Illinois (140 cases), Iowa (10 cases), Maryland (30 cases), Michigan (40 cases) and New Jersey (110 cases). Each case contains 40 vials of the donated drug.
“State health departments will distribute the doses to appropriate hospitals in their states because state and local health departments have the greatest insight into community-level needs in the COVID-19 response, including appropriate distribution of a treatment in limited supply” the US Department of Health stated.
Candidates for the donated doses must be patients on ventilators or on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or who require supplemental oxygen due to room-air blood oxygen levels at or below 94%.
In addition to the donated doses, remdesivir also is available in the U.S. through clinical trials.
The National Institutes of Health and Gilead worked together to conduct a randomized controlled clinical trial of the investigational drug in hospitalized patients. Preliminary results suggested that remdesivir was associated with faster recovery, although the data was not sufficient to determine if the drug was associated with lower mortality.
TipRanks data shows that out of the 28 analysts covering Gilead in the past three months, 15 are now sidelined with a Hold rating on the stock, 8 say Buy and 5 say Sell, adding up to a Hold consensus rating. The $79.39 average price target suggests analysts see limited upside potential in the shares in the coming 12 months- given that shares are currently rallying 19% year-to-date. (See Gilead stock analysis on TipRanks)
Loaded and ready to unload around 7.30 mark!!!!
Shares of Waitr (NASDAQ:WTRH) have popped today, up by 16% as of 1:45 p.m. EDT, after the company reported first-quarter earnings. The regional food delivery tech platform beat top-line expectations and said online order activity has jumped.
So what
Revenue in the first quarter came in at $44.2 million, slightly ahead of the $43.2 million in sales that analysts were modeling for. Net loss was $2.1 million, or $0.03 per share, which was exactly how much red ink Wall Street was expecting. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.7 million, compared to negative $9.9 million a year ago. Average daily orders in Q1 were approximately 37,500, and Waitr had over 2 million active diners at the end of the quarter.
Food in take out boxes
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
"Since the COVID-19 outbreak intensified in the United States, we have implemented a number of measures to protect our local communities, diners, restaurant partners, drivers and employees," CEO Carl Grimstad said in a statement. "We began offering no-contact delivery for all restaurant orders, provided gloves, hand sanitizer and masks to our drivers, and continued to pay any employee or driver who is quarantined or contracts the coronavirus."
Now what
Waitr said that order activity decreased in mid-March but has since rebounded strongly and orders in April were "higher than pre-pandemic levels." Revenue for April should be around $20 million, which should yield adjusted EBITDA of over $4 million for the month.
The company had approximately $53 million in cash at the end of April and continues to improve revenue per order and cash flow, which Grimstad says will "stabilize and position the Company for the long term."
Moderna Inc (NASDAQ:MRNA)
Q1 2020 Earnings Call
May 9, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
Prepared Remarks
Questions and Answers
Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to Moderna's First Quarter 2020 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Lavina Talukdar, Head, Investor Relations at Moderna. Please proceed.
Lavina Talukdar -- Head of Investor Relations
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Moderna's conference call to discuss our first quarter 2020 business updates and financial results. You can access the press release issued this morning as well as the slides that we'll be reviewing by going to the Investors section of our website. Speaking on today's call are Stephane Bancel, our CEO; Tal Zaks, our CMO; Stephen Hoge, our President; and Lorence Kim, our CFO. Before we begin, please note that this conference call will include forward-looking statements. Please see Slide two of the accompanying presentation and our SEC filings for important risk factors that could cause our actual performance and results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise the information provided on this call as a result of new information or future results or developments.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Stephane.
Stephane Bancel -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Lavina, and good morning or good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. I hope you and your families are in good health. As you know, we believe mRNA has a potential to be a new class of medicines with the opportunity to address many unmet medical needs, with medicines with higher probability of technical success, with greater speed of research and clinical development versus traditional medicines and with better manufacturing capital efficiency and lower cost of goods than injectable recombinants. Given the amounts of working with new technology, we have been laser-focused on managing risk: technology risk, biology risk, execution risk and financing risk. As many of you know, 2019 was an important inflection year for Moderna. We reported clinically validating data from key programs into other modalities, prophylactic vaccines and systemic secreted and cell surface therapeutics, data that we believe fundamentally changed the risk profile for each of these two modalities that we now call comodalities. As a result, our strategy is to double down in these two comodalities with many important new development candidates space. We have already announced five new development candidates in these comodalities since January 13 at the JPMorgan Conference: three new development candidates in infectious disease: prophylactic vaccines and two in the systemic secreted and cell surface therapeutics modality.
While we focus on doubling down in comodalities, we are still very interested in understanding the potential of our mRNA technology in our current exploratory modalities: cancer vaccines, intratumoral immuno-oncology, localized regenerative therapeutics and systemic intracellular therapeutics. So when we think about the company, we basically have two distinct area of focus. This is a significant point in our strategy. We have comodalities we want to scale and invest and exploratory comodalities that continue to be a big driver to the company's future as we await clinical data to decide the path forward. So stepping back, I would have to share with you the progress of the company toward a new class of medicines. This is a strategic plan that we shared with you in February 2020. In the early days of the company, our goal was to enter the clinic safely. We spent years investing and developing mRNA science, formulation delivery and manufacturing technologies. The company pivoted out of that growth phase when we entered the clinic with our H10 influenza vaccine in December 2015. In the clinic, our next goal was to learn how well our technology was working or not. We explored our technology across six different modalities. We tested 16 different molecules in the clinic in a short 4-year period. In 2019, we generated important data in two of these six modalities and identified our first two comodalities, infectious disease prophylactic vaccines and systemic secreted and cell surface therapeutics.
Early in the year, we entered a new phase of company's development. Our goal for this next phase in our history is to file multiple BLAs while continuing our clinical programs in the four exploratory modalities and continue to invest aggressively in early research to invent new modalities such as our ongoing collaboration with Vertex. When we first presented this plan in early February this year, we had imagined that the next phase of growth of the company will have taken us three to four years. Our vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 virus, mRNA-1273, is a major acceleration of our company's development. Today, we are very happy to announce that we received yesterday clearance from the FDA to proceed with the Phase II. It's just nine days from filing our IND on Monday, April 27, the FDA gave us a green light. We intend to start the clinical trial as soon as safely possible. We've also announced this morning that we are finalizing the Phase III protocol. And our aim is to start dosing the Phase III in early summer 2020. This means that we have a potential for a BLA approval for mRNA-1273 in 2021. That is an acceleration of several years versus the plan we had just months ago. Moderna should be a commercial company sorry, Moderna should be a commercial-stage company in 2021. That is two to three years ahead of our previous plans, plans we outlined just months ago. This is a unique opportunity. So we are working actively to get the company ready.
To deliver on this acceleration of the company's plan, we're expanding our leadership team in areas where their expertise will be instrumental to allow us to successfully file several BLAs and be ready commercially. Today, we are announcing three new addition to the leadership roles of Moderna. First, Patrick Bergstedt. Patrick joins Moderna as Senior Vice President, Commercial Vaccines. Patrick will report to me. Patrick joins from Merck & Co. where he most recently was Head of Global Marketing & Commercial Operations for the entire vaccine business at Merck. Patrick will start on June 1. Patrick led global initiatives with a focus on revenue growth and access expansion. The 20-plus year veteran in the biopharma industry, Patrick has held various leadership positions within the infectious disease and global health at Merck in the U.S., in Europe, but also in Asia. Second, Jacqueline Miller, Dr. Jacqueline Miller. Jacqueline will be joining Moderna on May 11 from GSK as Senior Vice President, Infectious Disease Development. Jacqueline joins the company from GSK where she held a variety of leadership roles since 2005. Most recently, Jacqueline was the Vice President and Head, Clinical R&D and Epidemiology, where she built and led the clinical and epidemiology research team at the first GSK vaccine research and development center in the U.S. And third, Dr. Charbel Haber. Charbel joined Moderna on April 21 as Senior Vice President for Regulatory Affairs. Charbel joined us from Biogen, where he served as Vice President, Global Safety and Regulatory Sciences since 2017.
In this role, he built and led the Global Regulatory Strategy Department, the clinical trial application group and the Medical Writing group. Prior to Biogen, Dr. Haber, was Head, Global Regulatory Affairs-Immunology and Neurology at EMD Serono. I am very excited to welcome Patrick, Jacqueline and Charbel and look forward to their contribution at Moderna as we embark on the commercial stage phase of our company. It is a bittersweet moment to announce today the departure from the company of Dr. Lorence Kim, our Chief Financial Officer. Lorence joined the company in 2014 when the company was private. As some of you remember, it was a preclinical stage company with 0 development candidates. Lorence super-chanced on Stephen Hoge and I and decided to leave a great job by Goldman Sachs to join us. The company is now public with 23 development candidates and preparing its first Phase III. Lorence will manage with us for a smooth transition. He will do Moderna second quarter conference call in August with us before leaving the company.
I am very thankful for Lorence's contribution over the years and for the constructive discussion he and I had about entering a smooth transition. There is never a good time for leadership transitions, but the company is very well capitalized with around $2.4 billion of capital to invest to create value. And we need to focus on the next phase of readiness for the company to be commercial. We have retained Russell Reynolds for the search for Moderna's next CFO. We will focus on a CFO who has public company and commercial and global operation experience, given this is where Moderna is heading. Before I hand over to Tal for clinical updates, I wanted to take a few minutes to frame the opportunity in our vaccine modality. We believe mRNA has the potential to be a new class of vaccines, where each of the four drivers of value apply. We are very excited about the potential of our vaccines to drive this value. First, as we discussed, a very large opportunity, the ability to do first-in-class vaccines that do not have products on the market today to protect as many people as we can. Second, a relatively high probability of technical success.
As we discussed at our Vaccine Day, Dr. Andrew Lo from MIT has shown that from the start of a Phase II, i.e., post the Phase I, to approval, vaccines have 42% probability of approval. This is the highest probability among all categories of medicines in clinical trial. We think this is a very important value driver for this franchise. Further, we think an important driver is speed, speed in the labs. Even we have a platform. We can study many candidates in parallel in preclinical setting. Most difficult development candidates to take into the clinic, we can do it very quickly, as we have shown recently with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, going from design of a vaccine on January 13 to injecting the first human on March 16 in as little as 63 days. Finally, we believe the capital efficiency of our platform offers significant advantages over traditional vaccines. Because the manufacturing process to make mRNA molecule is a cell-free manufacturing process, it can drive much lower capex versus recombinant protein manufacturing. The second dimension is the capex leverage across value chain. For example, when we decided to go after SARS-CoV-2, we did not have to buy any new machine. Our team was able to leverage existing capex in a matter of days.
With that overview, let me now turn over to Tal. Tal?
Tal Zaks -- Chief Medical Officer
Thank you, Stephane, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a quick reminder on the data generated to date with our vaccines. In over 1,500 healthy volunteers and seven positive Phase I data sets to date, we have observed a safety profile that's consistent with the safety of adjuvanted vaccines. And we've time and again demonstrated the ability to elicit an immune response in the form of neutralizing antibodies. I'll start with a high-level progress on mRNA-1273, our vaccines against SARS CoV-2, and will give more detail shortly. As you heard from Stephane earlier, we have the FDA clearance to move into our Phase II study, and we plan to start it shortly. This study will run in parallel with the NIH-run Phase I study, which has completed enrollment of the first three dose cohorts. Our CMV Phase II dose confirmation study is fully enrolled, and we still expect data readout to come in the third quarter of this year, despite having had some COVID-19-related disruptions. At our Vaccines Day on April 14, we announced positive interim analysis of our Phase I study for our Zika vaccine. At the two lower doses of 10 microgram and 30 microgram, we achieved seroconversion rates of 94% and 100%, respectively. The two higher dose cohorts of 100 microgram and 250 microgram are now fully enrolled. As a reminder, we paused our hMPV/PIV3 Phase Ib study enrollment as a cautionary measure to protect children and their caregivers due to COVID-19 disruptions.
Our RSV program with Merck continues. So this has been covered in detail, but just to quickly pace everybody on the same place, our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, mRNA-1273, which was a subject of much work and discussion in the first quarter of this year, demonstrates the kind of speed that we believe the platform can provide, from first selection of a sequence by our scientists and our collaborators at NIAID on January 13 to the production of a clinical batch on February 7, 25 days later. That had been released by February 24, and by March 4, was associated with an open IND that NIAID had filed. The strong collaboration between us and NIAID led to this the trial opening within 63 days, and we've spoken about this before. On April 17, we were awarded a contract from the U.S. government agency, BARDA, to accelerate the development. And on April 27, we announced an IND was submitted to the U.S. FDA for the Phase II study. Last Friday, we announced a collaboration with Lonza to manufacture mRNA-1273 at scale, with the goal of producing up to one billion doses a year. And of course, today, we announced the FDA clearance to start the Phase II part. In parallel, we have been working on the Phase III protocol, and we are finalizing that with an aim to start the study in the summer of 2020. The design of the Phase I study is on Slide 17. The study started as a 45-subject trial with three dose cohorts, 25, 100 and 250 microgram, with each participant receiving two vaccinations a month apart. Phase III dose cohorts have now been fully enrolled, and the safety and immunogenicity data from them will be shared when available.
The NIH is expanding the trial to include two additional age cohorts, a 56- to 70-year-old cohort and a 71-and-above age cohort. Each of these age cohorts will include three dose levels also at 25, 100 and 250 microgram at the same vaccination schedule. In terms of the late phase development for mRNA-1273, as mentioned before, the Phase II study is expected to start shortly. This study will evaluate the safety, reactogenicity and immunogenicity of two vaccinations of mRNA-1273 given 1-month apart. Volunteers will receive either placebo, 50 or 250 micrograms at both vaccinations. This study will enroll 600 healthy participants and two cohorts of adults, ages 18 to 55 and 55-year-old-and-above. The study is meant to both increase our safety database as well as confirm the immunogenicity seen in the phase that we expect to see in the Phase I. We are finalizing, as I said, the Phase III protocol, and the study is expected to begin this summer. Last week, Moderna and Lonza announced a strategic collaboration with the goal to enable manufacturing of up to one billion doses a year, and this is assuming a dose of 50 micrograms. Technology transfer is expected to begin this June, and we anticipate the first batches of mRNA-1273 to be manufactured at Lonza's U.S. sites in July of this year. I would be remiss not to mention BARDA's role in this. The BARDA award is allowing for us to move as quickly as we are with scale-up, both internally and with Lonza. Moving on to CMV. Slide 20 reviews our late-stage development plans for CMV. As previously announced, the Phase II dose confirmation study is fully enrolled, and we remain on track for data readout in the third quarter of 2020. Importantly, greater than 70% of participants have now received their second vaccine dose. A protocol amendment was submitted to expand the time frame for the remaining participants to receive their second dose as well.
As a reminder, we plan to select a dose for the Phase III after the first interim analysis, which is the data post the second vaccination. We continue to prepare for the Phase III, which is intended to start in 2021 in the U.S. and Europe. During the first quarter of 2020, we also received constructive feedback from the Type C CMC meeting that we've had with the FDA. Moving on to mRNA-1893, our Zika vaccine program. Let me recap on Slide 24 the data that we recently presented at our Vaccines Day, where we reported an interim analysis of the ongoing Phase I trial. This study has demonstrated a fairly benign safety profile, consistent with what we've seen before for other vaccines. And at the two lower doses of 10 and 30 micrograms after a two dose vaccination regimen, prime and boost, the seroconversion rates were 94% and 100%, respectively. These data are encouraging, and we are preparing to move forward with this program into a Phase II trial. The exploratory modalities are a critical part of our strategy, and we continue to make up a significant part of what we do in the clinic. And on Slide 26, you see a if you scan the page, you'll see many readouts and catalysts from each of the programs, both from our core modalities as well as the exploratory ones.
With that, let me now turn the call over to Lorence.
Lorence Kim -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Tal. Let me first cover an update on the Vertex agreement. In July 2016, we entered into a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Vertex in that discovery and development of potential mRNA medicines for the treatment of cystic fibrosis or CF by enabling cells in the lungs that people see us to potentially produce functional CFTR proteins. In July of 2019, the initial research term was extended by six months. And based upon promising preclinical data generated, in March of 2020, we were pleased that Vertex elected to extend this collaboration for a further 18 months. Now let me turn to financial results. In today's press release, we reported our first quarter 2020 financial results. Note that these results are unaudited. We raised approximately $550 million in net proceeds from the February public equity offering, which resulted in us ending Q1 2020 with cash, cash equivalents and investments of $1.72 billion. This compares to $1.26 billion at the end of 2019. Net cash used in operating activities was $106 million for the first quarter of 2020 compared to $144 million in 2019. And just as a reminder, that latter number includes an in-licensing payment of $22 million, which will not recur. Cash used for purchases of property and equipment was $6 million for the first quarter of 2020 compared to $8 million in 2019. Revenue for the first quarter of 2020 was $8 million compared to $16 million in 2019. This decrease of $8 million in revenue was mainly due to cumulative catch-up adjustments resulting from changes in our estimated costs for our future performance obligations, coupled with the timing of amortization of deferred revenue due to the satisfaction of our performance obligations. R&D expenses for the first quarter of 2020 were $115 million compared to $130 milli
May 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Saturday it would allow state health departments to distribute Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir drug to fight COVID-19, and the United States would receive about 40% of the drug maker's global donation.
Gilead has committed to supply approximately 607,000 vials of remdesivir over the next six weeks in the United States, and the U.S. state health department will distribute the doses to appropriate hospitals in their states, HHS said.
Gilead's drug has shown promise in helping patients infected with COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, and is being closely watched on how the limited supply is distributed.
Hahahahaha..... so TRUE $$$$$$$$$
We shall see how it ALL plays out but yes, it is a possibility.... Anything can happen on USO.... GLTA except Shorty
For the last time Dr Phil.... I’m a LONG HERE !!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately when there’s opinions here I’m RUNNING my Mouth on MRN$.... I believe in this stock still so until there’s more positive news nothing really to discuss. I do enjoy Your professional theories though. Ohhhhh but when it does,,,, be ready..... I haven’t forgot about you kissing emoji
CCL looking STRONG on a FRIDAY $$$$$$$$$$)
Profit is profit my friend, been here a while. Only seeing positive results. Knew patients would pay off. Best of trades to ya $$$$$$$$
today, up by 16% as of 1:45 p.m. EDT, after the company reported first-quarter earnings. The regional food delivery tech platform beat top-line expectations and said online order activity has jumped.
So what
Revenue in the first quarter came in at $44.2 million, slightly ahead of the $43.2 million in sales that analysts were modeling for. Net loss was $2.1 million, or $0.03 per share, which was exactly how much red ink Wall Street was expecting. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.7 million, compared to negative $9.9 million a year ago. Average daily orders in Q1 were approximately 37,500, and Waitr had over 2 million active diners at the end of the quarter.
Food in take out boxes
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
"Since the COVID-19 outbreak intensified in the United States, we have implemented a number of measures to protect our local communities, diners, restaurant partners, drivers and employees," CEO Carl Grimstad said in a statement. "We began offering no-contact delivery for all restaurant orders, provided gloves, hand sanitizer and masks to our drivers, and continued to pay any employee or driver who is quarantined or contracts the coronavirus."
Now what
Waitr said that order activity decreased in mid-March but has since rebounded strongly and orders in April were "higher than pre-pandemic levels." Revenue for April should be around $20 million, which should yield adjusted EBITDA of over $4 million for the month.
The company had approximately $53 million in cash at the end of April and continues to improve revenue per order and cash flow, which Grimstad says will "stabilize and position the Company for the long term."
Slow and steady$$$$$$$$$ slow and steady $$$$$$$)
Be patient. The country is just now opening back. Meaning people going back to work,,,,,, This is a good one to sit back and watch $$$$$$$
This is trading perfectly!!!!!!
Loving this RUN on a Friday $$$$$$$$$$
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said Friday it is testing Gilead Sciences Inc.'s GILD, -0.50% remdesivir in combination with Eli Lilly & Co.'s LLY, +0.34% rheumatoid arthritis drug Olumiant in COVID-19 patients as part of the next phase of the randomized, controlled clinical trial that led to the authorization of remdesivir. This study will enroll 1,000 people at more than 100 sites in the U.S. and abroad, to "examine if adding an anti-inflammatory agent to the remdesivir regimen can provide additional benefit for patients," NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a statement. The topline results from the remdesivir trial helped make up the basis of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) emergency use authorization for the drug last week. A number of medicines that have been previously approved by the FDA to treat rheumatoid arthritis have been proposed as possible COVID-19 treatments, including Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. REGN, +0.65% and Sanofi's SNY, -0.51% Kevzara and Roche Holding AG's ROG, -0.21% Actemra. Olumiant, which was developed by Incyte Corp. INCY, -0.83% and is licensed to Lilly, brought in $427 million in sales in 2019 for the Indianapolis-based drugmaker. Only two types of therapies - remdesivir and hydroxycholorquine and chlorquine - are authorized by the FDA as COVID-19 treatments. Year-to-date, Gilead's stock has gained 18.6%, while shares of Lilly are up 16.6%. The S&P 500 SPX, 1.45% is down 10.8%.
Solid DD..... No FLUFF!!!!!! We’re very very close.
Ummmmm,,,, he knew the whole time and yet thought he could short this stock and strike fear.... Told him he was wrong and now his tail is tucked....
MRNA running $$$$$$$$$$$$$
Within a week of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization of remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment, clinicians are pushing the Trump administration to clarify how it is selecting which hospitals get access to the drug.
Shares of Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +0.69%, which developed remdesivir, were up 1.0% in trading on Thursday.
The emergency use authorization (EUA) for remdesivir, which came out on Friday, states that distribution of the drug will be controlled by the U.S. government, which will then allocate the medication to hospitals and other health care providers. However, several organizations have raised questions this week about access to the treatment, which is only one of two types of COVID-19 drugs to receive an EUA since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Advertisement
Read: FDA grants Gilead’s remdesivir emergency authorization for COVID-19 treatment
AmerisourceBergen Corp. ABC, +4.31%, the distributor for remdesivir, said in a statement on Tuesday that the administration is coordinating “the distribution of remdesivir to hospitals in regions most heavily impacted by COVID-19,” and that it and Gilead aren’t involved in that decision-making around distribution.
In a letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, the HIV Medicine Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America said: “The plan for distributing remdesivir should be transparent and should be based on state and regional COVID-19 case data and hospitalization rates.”
NOW PLAYING:
What's the Difference Between a Bear Market and a Recession?
00:06
02:08
Visit our Video Center
A physician associated with Boston Medical Center tweeted that the hospital hasn’t received any doses of remdesivir. “We have the second highest absolute case count and highest per bed in Boston,” Dr. Benjamin Linas, an epidemiologist at the safety net hospital, tweeted on Wednesday. “We also had no access to early trials. Today, the family of a dying patient asked me why we do not have RDV. What am I supposed to say?”
Doctors at other hospitals around the U.S. have raised similar concerns, according to Stat News.
The development and distribution of remdesivir doesn’t follow the same model as drugs launched pre-pandemic. The therapy didn’t go through the FDA approval process; instead it received an EUA, and only the topline data from a Phase 3 clinical trial conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been shared publicly and used to inform the EUA. Gilead has said that additional data will be made available in a study that will be peer reviewed and published in a medical journal.
In addition, Gilead has said that through June it will donate 1.5 million doses of the drug, which can be used for 140,000 patients on a 10-day regimen.
Fuel for Investing Smarter
Make the smartest investment decisions with access to Barron's in-depth analysis and unrivaled market predictions -- all conveniently accessed on MarketWatch.com. Limited-Time Offer: $12 for $12 Weeks.
LEARN MORE
When the FDA granted an EUA to hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 patients, it prompted a run on the drug that led some states like New York to put requirements around who could get a prescription for hydroxychloroquine as patients who take the medicines for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis found themselves without access to their prescriptions.
Advertisement
See also: Majority of new COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York are people who stayed at home
Given the lack of proven treatments for a disease that has killed more than 266,000 people worldwide, since the novel coronavirus was detected last year, it’s not surprising that access to remdesivir has become a concern for those at the frontline of caring for severely ill COVID-19 patients. On Tuesday, the company announced that it was in talks with other drugmakers to produce remdesivir outside of the U.S.
“We intend to allocate our available supply based on guiding principles that aim to direct global access for appropriate patients in urgent need of treatment,” CEO Daniel O’Day told investors last week, according to a FactSet transcript of the earnings call.
Separately, Gilead announced Thursday that it received approval for remdesivir under the brand-name Vuklury in Japan as a treatment for severely COVID-19 patients there.
Since the start of the year, Gilead’s stock is up 20.0%, while shares of AmerisourceBergen have gained 4.9%. The S&P 500 SPX, 1.27% is down 11.8%.
Y A W N!!!!!!!!!!
Moderna Inc. jumped before the market open Thursday and may reach a record high on accelerated plans to develop an experimental vaccine for Covid-19.
After getting approval from U.S. regulators to proceed on Wednesday, a mid-stage trial is expected to start shortly. The vaccine, mRNA-1273, could be in late-stage study by early summer, Moderna said in a statement. The biotechnology company is preparing for an application for its product to be approved as soon as 2021.
Moderna’s stock rose as much as 20% to $58.85 early Thursday.
The mid-stage study will enroll 600 healthy adults, with a first look at results expected in the third quarter. Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said in a statement that the imminent study start for its vaccine marks a “a crucial step forward.”
Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, on Wednesday discussed plans for a larger vaccine trial this summer that could have results later in the year showing how effective it is. If the vaccine is successful, high-risk people such as those with health conditions or who are elderly could get access sooner, Zaks said. Zaks spoke in a webcast interview with the publication Stat.
The quickened pace of development is getting a boost from the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” which targets getting a vaccine to most Americans by the end of the year. That ambitious goal could be thwarted by the slower pace of science as well as the challenges of manufacturing massive amounts of as yet unproven inoculations.
Earlier this month, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company teamed up with Swiss chemical and and pharmaceutical firm Lonza Group AG to manufacture a billion doses a year of Moderna’s messenger RNA-based vaccine.
News just keeps coming SHORTY $$$$$$
“We are accelerating manufacturing scale-up and our partnership with Lonza puts us in a position to make and distribute as many vaccine doses of mRNA-1273 as possible, should it prove to be safe and effective,” Bancel said.
Bancel doesn’t believe “the virus is going away,” and said he hopes many vaccines make their way to the finish line. That broad effort will be necessary to meet global demand, he said. In the U.S., Moderna will look to the government to decide “the allocation that makes sense for the country.”
In terms of ensuring global availability of a coronavirus vaccine, Bancel said “we are going to be constrained for some time.”
Moderna also made changes to its management ranks on Thursday. Lorence Kim, the company’s chief financial officer who was with the company prior to its public listing, plans to depart in August.
Additionally, Jacqueline Miller, formerly of GlaxoSmithKline, will join Moderna to lead infectious-disease development, and Patrick Bergstedt, who recently led global marketing and commercial operations of vaccines at Merck, will join Moderna on June 1 to work on commercializing its vaccines.
(Updates to add management, drug development details.)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.
Looking good today $$$$$
CHEF.......too STRONG to stay down $$$$$$$$$$
Should have bought NORWEGIAN and u could get 8s. 13s is a great entry point rookie. CCL still strong with lots of LONGS here.
Better luck on shorting another stock. Hard lesson learned for u here
Your professional opinion was WRONG!!!!!!
Weren’t expecting the NEWS that came out this morning huh$$$$$$
Break 55 and then next leg up!!!!! Let’s see how today goes. GLTA except Shorty $$$$$
Guess Shorty was wrong about yesterday!!!!!
“The imminent Phase 2 study start is a crucial step forward as we continue to advance the clinical development of mRNA-1273, our vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. With the goal of starting the mRNA-1273 pivotal Phase 3 study early this summer, Moderna is now preparing to potentially have its first BLA (biologics license application) approved as soon as 2021” says Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO.
Moderna notes that it was awarded up to $483 million funding from BARDA for accelerated development of mRNA-1273, and has also entered into a strategic collaboration with Lonza Ltd. to manufacture up to one billion doses of mRNA-1273 per year.
By utilizing messenger RNA (mRNA) science, Moderna hopes to create a new class of transformative medicines for patients. mRNA medicines are designed to direct the body’s cells to produce intracellular, membrane or secreted proteins that can have a therapeutic or preventive benefit and have the potential to address a broad spectrum of diseases.
For instance the company also announced positive interim results from its Phase 1 Zika vaccine candidate (mRNA-1893) study.
Although analysts have a Strong Buy consensus on Moderna stock, its recent rally means that the $46 average analyst price target now indicates 6% downside potential from current levels. (See MRNA stock analysis on TipRanks).
“We note our model currently ascribes modest long-term sales projections for mRNA-1273 given limited visibility on commercial prospects for the program in the long term” comments Chardan Capital analyst Geulah Livshits. She has a buy rating on the stock and $52 price target, adding “We do believe there is a possibility of governments selecting mRNA-1273 for stockpiling in 2021-22.”
WTF is going on here $$$$$$$$,,,,,, Has the spaceship turned on the engines or something!!!!!
May 06, 2020 7:26 PM ETGilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD)24 Comments
Japan plans to approve Gilead Sciences' (NASDAQ:GILD) antiviral remdesivir on Thursday, according to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In a live-streamed interview, Abe says he will confer with experts May 14 and is looking to set standards for lifting the emergency declared over the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg notes. those will be based on analysis of new infections as well as the overall healthcare system.
He also says trials will begin of an anti-parasite drug, ivermectin.
Hahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think we’re ok
Shake my head emoji at him. Poor guy
Reuters) - Gilead Sciences Inc (O:GILD) faces a new dilemma in deciding how much it should profit from the only treatment so far proven to help patients infected with the novel coronavirus.
The drugmaker earned notoriety less than a decade ago, when it introduced a treatment that essentially cured hepatitis C at a price of $1,000 per pill.
Public outrage over the cost of Sovaldi in 2013 - despite that it was a vast improvement over existing equally expensive therapies - ignited a national debate on fair pricing for prescription medicines that the pharmaceutical industry has fought to deflect ever since.
That backlash has subsided considerably in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, during which drugmakers’ efforts to develop vaccines and treatments is considered essential to battling a disease that has infected some 3.7 million people and killed over 258,000 worldwide.
Gilead is now in the spotlight again after data showed its antiviral drug remdesivir helped reduce hospital stays for COVID-19 patients, and the U.S. authorized wide emergency use of the therapy.
Wall Street analysts say remdesivir could generate $750 million or more in worldwide sales next year, and $1.1 billion in 2022, assuming the pandemic continues. But Gilead, and other drugmakers, will need to avoid the appearance of taking advantage of a global health crisis to rake in profit, according to pharmaceutical industry consultants and former regulators.
"This is a tremendous opportunity for drug manufacturers," to improve the industry's image, said Ed Schoonveld, a drug pricing expert at consulting firm ZS Associates. “There has been an overwhelmingly negative focus on drug prices."
Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O'Day, in the post just over a year, is proceeding with caution. The company is donating enough remdesivir for at least 140,000 patients for distribution by the U.S. government to hospitals nationally.
At a meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House on Friday, O'Day pledged to make the therapy available to those in need.
Gilead also aims to increase worldwide manufacturing to supply over a million coronavirus patients by year-end, rising to several million in 2021, if required. The company has not disclosed its pricing plans.
"I think this will certainly help the industry's reputation," O'Day said on a recent conference call with investors. "I'm not suggesting that there won't continue to be focus and pressure on drug pricing ... but it's being done now in a way where we can have an appreciation for the innovation the industry brings." Gilead on Tuesday said it was talking with chemical and drug manufacturers to produce remdesivir for Europe, Asia and the developing world through at least 2022. The company said it was negotiating voluntary licenses with generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan, who would produce a lower-cost supply of remdesivir for developing countries.
FEDERAL MARCH IN?
Estimates of a fair price for remdesivir in the United States, where drugmakers generally charge the most for a new therapy, vary widely.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices, suggested a maximum price of $4,500 per 10-day treatment course based on the preliminary evidence of how much patients benefited in a clinical trial. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday said remdesivir should be priced at $1 per day of treatment, since "that is more than the cost of manufacturing at scale with a reasonable profit to Gilead."
Some Wall Street investors expect Gilead to come in at $4,000 per patient or higher to make a profit above remdesivir's development cost, which Gilead estimates at about $1 billion.
Gilead shares have risen about 20% since the beginning of the year, largely on hopes for remdesivir. That compares with a drop of 12% for the broad S&P500 Index.
Some experts warn that a much higher U.S. price for remdesivir would put Gilead back in the crosshairs on drug pricing. In a more extreme scenario, the company could risk federal or state government action to march in and invalidate the medicine's patent protection in the name of public health and issue mandatory manufacturing orders.
The U.S. government has never invoked those rights. But it has sued Gilead over patents on two of its widely-used HIV drugs that received federal funding grants while in development.
"If there is ever a time when those issues might arise, this would be that time," said Eric Katz, CEO at consulting firm HealthTech GPS, which advises the industry on pricing.
Katz, a former official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the government could make similar arguments over remdesivir, which was originally developed to treat Ebola with federal funding, and is now being studied in a trial backed by the National Institutes of Health.
Democratic lawmaker Lloyd Doggett of Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, sent Gilead a letter this week demanding the company detail its plans for remdesivir, including supply issues, disclosure of taxpayer investment in the drug's development, and purchase and pricing arrangements. "American taxpayers have made a big investment in remdesivir, but now in return, those who need treatment may get only a big bill while Gilead gets a big payoff,” Doggett warned.