iPhone Maker Foxconn Makes Masks For Chinese Employees

Electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Co. Ltd. HNHPF, better known as Foxconn, is making its own line of surgical masks as it seeks to restart production in China.

What Happened

Foxconn has been running test production of the masks at its Lunghua manufacturing centre since February 5, it said in a WeChat post Thursday, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.
The manufacturing giant now awaits quality approval as it plans to produce up to 2 million units per day by the end of this month, the Nikkei noted.
The masks would initially be made available for Foxconn employees, but it didn’t rule out exporting them at a later stage.
Chinese authorities are requiring businesses to guarantee that they have enough protective gear for workers before they can restart production as the novel coronavirus continues to spread, a person familiar with the matter told the Nikkei.
Foxconn is taking “many proactive measures,” including making the masks, to make a convincing case, the source said.
The company is also asking hundreds of its Taiwanese employees to return to work in China before February 10, who left for the Lunar New Year holiday, but stayed longer due to the outbreak, the Nikkei reported.
Taiwan has banned all travel from mainland China and advised its citizens not to travel to China.
Foxconn is asking employees to sign “self-declaration forms” before their travel, that asks them to tick boxes saying they have completed a prevention training session and that their family agrees with them taking the trip, internal documents by the Nikkei showed.

Why It Matters

Foxconn is best known for manufacturing Apple Inc. AAPL products including the iPhone and the iPad, but also makes products for other tech companies worldwide.
Some of the other products manufactured by Foxconn including Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN Kindle, Nintendo Co., Ltd.’s NTDOY 3DS model, and Microsoft Corporation’s MSFT PlayStation devices.
Foxconn halting production means not just loss of business for the company, but impacts all its partners.
At the same time, the coronavirus continues to spread with 31, 161 confirmed cases and at least 636 deaths reported.
The restarting of production puts employees at the risk of getting infected, while they’re saying that they don’t have a choice when it comes to getting back at work.
“Who dares not to sign this form? I feel like I am being forced to return to an epidemic area and risk my own health,” a Foxconn employee told the Nikkei.
Apple and Foxconn were previously found to be in violation of the Chinese labor laws at the latter’s Zhengzhou factory August last year, the Business Insider reported.
https://www.benzinga.com/news/20/02/15276500/iphone-maker-foxconn-makes-masks-for-chinese-employees-forces-them-to-return-to-work

Chinese President Xi Jinping Calls Trump As Coronavirus Worries Escalate

The President of China Xi Jinping assured President Trump in a phone call that China has been doing all it could to contain the coronavirus epidemic that has killed nearly 640 people.

What Happened

Xi called Trump on Friday and claimed that China was “fully confident and capable” of defeating the coronavirus epidemic. According to Reuters, the Chinese president has declared a ‘people’s war’ on the epidemic and said that China would respond with all its strength and the most thorough and strict prevent and control measures.
The statement comes after Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist who broke the news of coronavirus on social media, passed away. Li, 34, received a rebuke and admonishment from Wuhan’s police, who labeled him as a rumormonger. The death of the whistleblower doctor has fuelled public anger about how China responded to the disease in its initial phase.

Why It Matters

China has been grappling with the spread of the coronavirus epidemic as Beijing begins to resemble a ghost town. Twenty four provinces, municipalities, and regions in China have instructed businesses not to resume work before Feb. 10. Meanwhile, Hubei, the province at the epicenter of the disease, will remain closed down till Feb.14.
Barron’s reports that Hubei is an important hub for the automobile industry, there are over 70 supplier plants in the province. Automakers that would be affected, among others, include Honda Motor Co Ltd HNDAF and General Motors Company GM.
The impact on automotive supply chains is already making an international impact with Hyundai Motor Co HYMTF shutting down its factories in South Korea temporarily, while US and EU carmakers are only weeks away from parts shortages.
https://www.benzinga.com/government/20/02/15276860/chinese-president-xi-jinping-calls-trump-as-coronavirus-worries-escalate

AbbVie EPS beats by $0.02, beats on revenue

AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV): Q4 Non-GAAP EPS of $2.21 beats by $0.02; GAAP EPS of $1.88 beats by $0.05.

Revenue of $8.7B (+4.7% Y/Y) beats by $20M.

Shares +1.54% PM.

Press Release

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3539653-abbvie-eps-beats-0_02-beats-on-revenue

Stericycle offloads environmental unit to Harsco

Stericycle (NASDAQ:SRCL) has agreed to sell its Domestic Environmental Solutions business, excluding the healthcare customer and unused consumer pharmaceutical take-back services, to Harsco (NYSE:HSC) for $462.5M in cash.

The transaction includes the division’s Manufacturing and Industrial Services and the retail portion of Hazardous Waste Services, which together employ approximately 2,000 team members across 61 facilities.

SRCL +0.9% premarket

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3539629-stericycle-offloads-environmental-unit-to-harsco

Catalyst Biosciences up 13% premarket on positive FIX data

Catalyst Biosciences (NASDAQ:CBIO) announces positive results from an open-label Phase 2b clinical trial evaluating its next-generation Factor IX (FIX) therapy, Dalcinonacog Alfa (DalcA), in six patients with severe hemophilia B. The data were presented at EAHAD in The Hague.

28 days of daily subcutaneous dosing with DalcA showed FIX levels of more than 12% with steady-state levels up to 27% after 14 days with no bleeds. [For comparison purposes, FIX levels are <1% in people with severe hemophilia B].

No anti-drug antibodies were detected and no serious adverse events were reported. Three subjects experienced injection site reactions, the majority (n=2 in this case, apparently) being mild and resolved without consequences.

Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data supporting the use of its subcutaneous FVIIa marzeptacog alfa (activated) (MarzAA) in acute or on-demand settings were also presented.

Shares up 13% premarket on light volume.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3539622-catalyst-biosciences-up-13-premarket-on-positive-fix-data

Gilead Sciences Expects FY20 EPS of $5.15 to $5.55

Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) said it expects earnings for fiscal 2020 to be between $5.15 and $5.55 a share.
On an adjusted basis, the biopharmaceutical company expects full-year earnings in the range of $6.05 to $6.45 a share.
The company also projects product sales to be between $21.8 billion and $22.2 billion for the year.

https://www.marketscreener.com/GILEAD-SCIENCES-4876/news/Gilead-Sciences-Expects-FY20-EPS-of-5-15-to-5-55-29940995/

Blue collar boom? College grads, baby boomers winners in Trump’s economy

U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out an eye-catching statistic in his State of the Union address Tuesday: the wealth held by the poorest half of American households increased three times as fast as the wealth held by the “1%” since he became president.

That’s true, according to Federal Reserve data.
On average, Americans have seen a 17% jump in household wealth since Trump’s election, while wealth at the bottom half has increased 54%.
“This is a blue collar boom,” Trump also said Tuesday. That’s less apparent. The biggest winners on a dollar basis were a familiar group – whites, college graduates, and people born during the “baby boom” between 1946 and 1964.
Since December 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full month in office, average household wealth has increased $15.8 trillion, but the vast majority went to groups that have tended to accumulate wealth in the past.
Even with a 54% increase in their household wealth under Trump, the poorest half of American households, around 64 million families, still have just 1.6% of household “net worth.”
HALF OF AMERICA
Net worth combines the value of assets like real estate and stocks and subtracts liabilities like mortgage loans and credit card balances.
Because America’s bottom 50% are starting from such a small base, given the enormous disparities in wealth in the United States, even large moves in their fortunes do little to dent the overall distribution. In dollar terms as of the end of September 2019, that latest data available from the Fed, the combined net worth of the poorest half of families was $1.67 trillion out of total U.S. household wealth of $107 trillion.
Here is what the Fed’s Distributional Financial Accounts have to say:
Historically, 17% growth in household wealth over 11 three-month “quarters,” or nearly three years, is pretty standard. There have been 110 such periods since the Fed’s data series begins in mid-1989, and the most recent ranks 55th, squarely in the middle.
On a quarterly basis, compound growth in household wealth since 1989 has averaged 1.39%. Under Trump it is slightly less, at 1.34%.
The bottom half of households saw their net worth rise by 54% under Trump, from $1.08 trillion to $1.67 trillion. That’s compared to an 18% rise for the top 1%, who control roughly a third of the total household wealth in America, or around $34.5 trillion.
Even after those gains, that works out to average net worth of around $26,000 for the bottom half of households versus around $27 million for the ones at the top.
Much of that increase among the bottom half was due to increases in real estate, not stocks, after a resurgence in home ownership rates that began in 2016.
Wages for lower-skilled jobs have of late been rising faster than those for higher-skilled occupations. But it takes time for income to be saved and translate into wealth. Since Trump took office, households headed by a college graduate captured 75% of the net worth gains, or around $11.88 trillion.
They represent about a third of all households, according to the Fed survey on which the data series is based.
Overall, households headed by a high school graduate, a group on the front lines of Trump’s pledge to restore blue collar fortunes, lost $0.4 trillion in net worth during his time in office. Those households represent about a fourth of the total.
A BABY BOOMER BOOM
Generationally, households with a head born from 1946 to 1964 did not get fooled again, as the 1971 rock anthem pledged. The title of Trump’s speech was “The Great American Comeback.” It could just as easily have been “OK Boomer, What About the Rest of Us?”
Baby boomers under Trump, himself a member of that generation, captured around $10 trillion of recent wealth gains, or about two-thirds of the total.
The Fed survey’s demographic estimates are as of 2016, and the population would have changed slightly since then. In 2016 about 36% of household heads (in the case of mixed-sex couples the Fed considers the man to be the head, in same-sex couples it is the oldest of the two) were headed by a member of the baby boom.
Wealth accumulates with time, and older people would tend to have a larger base to start with. But for millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, the last three years of booming markets have meant an extra half trillion dollars only, spread across about 20.6% of households. GenX’ers, born between 1965 and 1980, got about 21% of the gains, and made up roughly 26% of households. The pre-baby boom “Silent Generation” got 16% of the gains, roughly in line with that group’s share of households.
Analyzed by race, the data told a familiar story of inequality. About 84% of recent wealth gains accrued to the 64% of households that self-identified to the Fed as white.
About 4.6% of wealth gains went to the 14.5% of households that identified as black, and 3.8% to the 10.1% of households that identified as Hispanic.

https://www.marketscreener.com/news/Blue-collar-boom-College-grads-baby-boomers-big-winners-in-Trump-s-economy–29957916/