Completed two royalty acquisitions in the first half of 2023 adding one cash flow generating asset, one NDA-ready asset, and a Phase 2 asset
Two portfolio assets are now generating cash flows from commercial sales
Company expects at least one partner to file a New Drug Application in third quarter of 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/xoma-reports-second-quarter-2023-113000980.html
Revenue Increased 45% YOY to $221.0 million; GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.56 and Non-GAAP Diluted EPS of $0.741
Royalty Revenue Increased 31% YOY to Record $111.7 million
Raised 2023 Non-GAAP Diluted EPS Guidance to $2.65-$2.75
Updated Revenue Guidance to $825-$845 million, Representing 25-28% YOY Growth, and EBITDA Guidance to $420-$440 million, Representing >30% YOY Growth1
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/halozyme-reports-second-quarter-2023-200100712.html
Insurance revenue grew 17% compared to Q2'22, and second quarter Insurance MCR improved to 77.2%, bringing first half MCR to 81.9%
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ambitious tailpipe emissions standards may be partly canceled out by emissions earlier in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain, said panelists at a RealClearEnergy webinar last Wednesday.
On April 12, the EPA unveiled new vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act which would mandate auto manufacturers to lower the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from their vehicles to a company wide average of 82 grams per mile by 2032. Currently, the average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile. Only one automaker, Tesla, would meet the standard today.
But while tailpipes present a major source of emissions for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, today’s EVs emit greenhouse gasses during the mining and processing of minerals and, in many cases, the generation of electricity.
“You just don’t even know if it’s gonna save carbon emissions, which is the point of the whole exercise,” said Rupert Darwall, Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.
A 2021 International Energy Agency (IEA) analysis found that compared with an ICE car, an EV achieves about a 50% reduction in life-cycle emissions, which accounts for mining and electricity. The report claims that “emissions from minerals development do not negate the climate advantages of clean energy technologies.”
But Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, points out that the IEA data relies on approximations based on uncertain assumptions about the supply chains of EV batteries. The range shown on the IEA’s graph could be anywhere from 75% emissions reductions to no reduction at all.
“No one has any idea where on that range you really lie,” said Mills.
Mills published a report last month, Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream, arguing that EVs present far too many uncertainties and limitations for governments to favor them through bans on the sales of ICE vehicles, or stringent standards like the EPA’s. Beyond emissions, the report cites high costs, humanitarian concerns, and reliance on China as issues for EVs. The report predicts “draconian impediments to affordable and convenient driving and a massive misallocation of capital in the world’s $4 trillion automotive industry.”
“From an engineering sense, flying cars are more likely than all EVs,” Mills quipped in the RealClear webinar.
Others argue these are not disqualifying limitations, but rather hurdles that can be overcome. In a separate interview, Dr. Al-Thaddeus Avestruz, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, explained that smaller batteries would reduce the demand for minerals, bringing down emissions, cost, and social impact.
“There are many new battery technologies that have less reliance on these really difficult to sustain materials,” said Avestruz.
One such technology, for which Avestruz has a patent, involves wireless power transfer. Akin to a wireless charging pad for mobile phones, Avestruz explained that roads and EVs could be equipped to charge cars as they move.
“You can think of these things as moving chargers that charge over, let's say, some corridors on the highway, and while moving seamlessly, you just get charged, and you don't even notice.”
While this technology could be costly to implement, Avestruz notes that wireless power transfer could enable EVs to use smaller batteries, which would reduce the need for unsustainable minerals.
“Potentially you can reduce the size of the batteries by half. And so the smaller batteries need less raw materials, they're lighter, meaning that overall, they’re more efficient.”
Other commonly proposed solutions to reduce the impacts of minerals include more sustainable mining practices such as the world’s first all-electric lithium mine currently being developed in Nevada, replacing lithium-ion batteries with sodium-ion batteries, and recycling or recovering minerals from EV batteries to use in new EVs or elsewhere. Avestruz received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for a project that aims to use retired EV batteries for energy storage on the electric grid.
Prior to the EPA’s new tailpipe standards, major automakers such as Ford Motor Company and General Motors had already stated their intent to join Tesla as leaders in the American EV market. In 2021, Ford announced a historic $11.4 billion investment into new EV manufacturing campuses in Tennessee and Kentucky.
On May 25, Ford CEO Jim Farley joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces to announce that starting early next year, Ford customers would gain access to the more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada. In 2025, Ford’s vehicles will also be equipped with Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector, eliminating the need for an adapter. GM made the same announcement two weeks later.
“Our goal is really to be as helpful as possible in accelerating towards sustainable transport. That’s also why we open source our patents and many of our designs are open sourced. We’re just glad to be as helpful as possible,” said Musk during the announcement.
Farley and Musk each acknowledged various concerns about the EV transition such as lithium processing and cathode refining. But ultimately, both CEOs expressed optimism that these challenges could be overcome.
“We’re going into the second inning of a nine-inning game, so we’re going to make adjustments along the way,” said Farley.
"Sanctuary" state Massachusetts is the latest to declare a state of emergency over its inability to handle thousands of immigrants who have arrived after being released from federal custody at the United States-Mexico border.
"This is a national issue that demands a national response," Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) said during a press conference on Tuesday morning. "Today, I am declaring a state of emergency in Massachusetts."
Healey called on Washington to help Massachusetts because the state could not financially or logistically respond to the 20,000 people living in state-funded shelters, hotels, dormitories, and other emergency facilities statewide — an 80% increase from a year ago. The state's 1983 "right to shelter" law maintains that any family, regardless of immigration status, is guaranteed immediate state-provided housing.
"It's more families than our state has ever served, exponentially more than our state has ever served in our emergency assistance program," Healey said at the event 2,000 miles away from the southern tip of Texas and the border crisis epicenter.
"We're unable to move people from housing and shelter into permanent housing because of this, so instead, we've been expanding and continuing to look for housing and shelter opportunities, expanding shelter at a rapid pace, and it's unsustainable."
Healey said the state had tried to address this worsening issue at the federal level and pushed the Biden administration for assistance to no avail. She also complained that the federal process to obtain work documents took too long and left immigrants unemployable.
Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll spoke and pleaded with the public to take in immigrant families.
"If you have an extra room or suite in your home, please consider hosting a family," Driscoll said.
Healey and Driscoll said they were struck by immigrants' desire to join the workforce as soon as possible. Both said they visited a temporary housing site at Salem State College last week where Healey said they were met by "kind, hardworking, resilient, resourceful, and enterprising newcomers" who were "eager to work."
Massachusetts's 7 million residents join other localities, including New York City, Chicago, and Washington, that have grappled to respond to the number of immigrants released into their communities from the border under President Joe Biden. All are sanctuary zones that have refused to cooperate with U.S. government immigration policies.
In 2017, the state's top court ruled that state court officers do not have the authority to arrest or hold an illegal immigrant solely because he or she was named in a federal immigration request, effectively making the state a "sanctuary" zone.
Since then, Massachusetts has rolled out initiatives to help immigrants who are awaiting asylum and deportation proceedings years down the road live normal lives while in the country. Just last month, the state began allowing any noncitizen residing in the state to obtain a noncommercial driver's license.
Illegal immigrants are also eligible for state assistance programs that cover the cost of food, as well as receive select healthcare coverage through the state's MassHealth Limited plan and financial assistance to pay rent through the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition, Emergency Rental and Mortgage Assistance Program, and Emergency Rental Assistance Program, according to the state's website.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, touted the state's sanctuary status when he flew a group of immigrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard. Residents on the island erupted at the move, which DeSantis argued was hypocritical given the state's willingness to help immigrants despite their having entered the country unlawfully.
Since Biden took office, more than 2 million people who illegally came across the southern border have been released into the United States. The large majority travel to places across the country.
A federal appeals court on Monday halted a rule from President Joe Biden's administration that could make it easier to obtain student loan debt relief for borrowers who say they were victims of misleading information about the quality of education they would receive.
At issue is a rule broadening existing policy ending the debt of students who borrowed money to attend colleges and universities that are determined to have misled them on matters such as whether their courses would actually prepare them for employment in their field or the likely salary they would earn upon obtaining a degree.
Career Colleges and Schools of Texas, an association of for-profit higher learning institutions, filed a lawsuit against the rule in February. Among its complaints was that the rules are so broad that they cover even unintentional actions by a college. They also said the rule unconstitutionally gives an executive branch agency, the Department of Education, what amounts to the power of a court in deciding whether to grant claims for debt relief.
Administration lawyers said relief granted by the department could be appealed in federal court.
The colleges asked a Texas-based federal judge to block the rule while the case plays out. The judge refused in a June ruling. But three 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges on Monday issued a brief order granting an injunction. The order said the panel would hear arguments in November.
The three judges on the panel in New Orleans are Edith Jones, nominated to the court by former President Ronald Reagan; and two nominees of former President Donald Trump, Stuart Kyle Duncan and Cory Wilson.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judges-halt-biden-rule-offering-student-debt-relief-102086217
Via Healthy Skeptic, this Report for the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry, providing a retrospective on covid in Scotland, is one of the most useful documents on the disease that I have read. Among other things, it provides a description of viruses, coronaviruses, covid-19, and how vaccines work that is the clearest I have seen. The whole report is eminently worth reading.
For now, I want to highlight the report’s laconic conclusions about shutdowns and other anti-covid interventions:
Physical measures against COVID-19
• From March 2020 onwards, and in common with many other governments, the Scottish government recommended or mandated a range of physical measures intended to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus which was the cause of COVID-19.
• The physical measures recommended or mandated by the Scottish government ranged from simple public health practices (the encouragement of frequent handwashing, cleaning of environmental surfaces, the use of PPE in hospitals and care homes) to coercive and / or intrusive measures (face mask mandates outside of healthcare settings; lockdowns; enforced social distancing; test, trace and isolate measures).
• In 2020 there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g. frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19.
• For other measures (e.g. face mask mandates outside of healthcare settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures) there was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use – or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years.
• It has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.
(Emphasis added.) As I say, laconic, but still devastating: there was either insufficient evidence or no evidence to support lockdowns, social distancing, etc., in 2020, and there still isn’t.
The report’s conclusions on vaccines are interesting as well:
Vaccines against COVID-19
• Vaccines against COVID-19 became available to the UK general public in December 2020; initially only the high-risk groups (the very old, the very sick) were targeted.
• All the COVID-19 vaccines procured by the UK government during 2020 and 2021 were nucleic acid vaccines using novel gene technology.
• As additional vaccine supplies became available, vaccination was extended to young, middle-aged and elderly adults, and to children.
• Vaccination against COVID-19 became a prerequisite of travel to many countries, and some UK employers made it obligatory for their workforce.
• It remains unclear as to whether or not COVID-19 vaccination has resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19.
That last finding is quite an indictment, not necessarily of the vaccines but of governments’ attacks on their citizens’ bodily autonomy.
• COVID-19 vaccines have been shown in randomised controlled trials to be effective, or probably effective, in reducing the number of people acquiring COVID-19 or severe COVID-19; however vaccine-induced protection against COVID-19 is short-lived.
• Because of the antigenic variability of all coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, it was foreseeable that COVID-19 vaccines would only provide short-term protection against COVID-19 (as is the case also with current vaccines against seasonal influenza).
• Because the novel gene technology vaccines procured by the UK government had been tested on relatively small study populations, and had been assessed for safety over short follow-up periods only, rare and sometimes serious adverse effects (including reported fatal events) emerged, once the vaccines had been used on a mass scale in the UK and in other countries.
The report was authored by a brilliantly qualified British physician named Ashley Croft.
To date, there has been virtually no accountability for the dreadful mistakes that American governments made during the covid epidemic. My impression is that the same is true in other countries. What I mean by that, primarily, is that as far as I know all of the governors who imposed grossly destructive shutdowns and other measures have been re-elected, if they have again stood for office. And Donald Trump, too, is still on the scene, apparently forgiven by voters for railing against states that did away with lockdowns.
As more time goes by, the likelihood of an accounting of any kind recedes. But at least documents like this one create a record that we can look back on, next time governments try to use a disease as an excuse to curtail liberties.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/08/no-science-then-no-science-now.php
