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Monday, January 8, 2024

Alignment: 44% Year-Over-Year Member Growth from Automated Enrollment

 Alignment Healthcare, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALHC), today announced that its Alignment Health Plan membership has increased by 44% to a total of approximately 155,500 members as of Jan. 1, following a successful Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), as compared to its membership as of Jan. 1, 2023.

“Alignment’s purpose-built Medicare Advantage (MA) platform gives us the visibility and control to serve seniors the right way,” said John Kao, founder and CEO of Alignment Healthcare. “This visibility and control have helped us improve stars, effectively manage care and create competitively advantaged products that led to the exceptional growth we achieved. Companies that prioritize happy and healthy members can indeed do well by doing good, and Alignment is proof of that.”

Additionally, the company expects to have 162,000 to 164,000 members by the end of 2024, based on its expectations for continued membership growth during the year.

With its strong membership growth, the company is reaffirming its expectation to achieve adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) breakeven in 2024.

“Our conviction to be adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2024 is strengthened by Alignment’s product strategy, expected positive gross profit contributions from new membership, continued operating leverage and ongoing cohort improvement,” said Kao. “Furthermore, we believe we will have continued competitive tailwinds that bolster our outlook for 2025.”

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/01/08/2805361/0/en/Alignment-Healthcare-Delivers-44-Year-Over-Year-Membership-Growth-Following-Significant-Boost-from-AEP-Increasing-Membership-to-155-500.html

Ardelyx Updates on Growing Commercial Momentum and 2024 Strategic Priorities

 Company achieved significant commercial progress in 2023

IBSRELA® now expected to generate greater than $1.0 billion in annual U.S. net product sales revenue at peak

Webcast scheduled for 7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT to discuss IBS-C Market

Webcast Details
The company will host a live event and webcast today, January 8, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. ET / 4:00 p.m. PT. The event will include a management update on IBSRELA, the company’s FDA approved treatment for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C), as well as a Key Opinion Leader discussion regarding the IBS-C treatment landscape with Philip Schoenfeld, MD, MS Ed, MSc, Chief (Emeritus) of the Gastroenterology Section at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit, Mich. The webcast can be accessed by visiting the Investor page of the company's website, www.ardelyx.com, and will be available on the website for at least 30 days following the call.

 https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/01/08/2805388/0/en/Ardelyx-Provides-Update-on-Growing-Commercial-Momentum-and-2024-Strategic-Priorities.html

PacBio shares fall on prelims

 

  • Announced that the GREGoR (Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases) consortium, in collaboration with the University of California Irvine, plans to sequence thousands of genomes utilizing HiFi technology to improve our understanding of genetics in rare disease.
  • Released SMRT Link 13.0 software on the Revio system which includes the adaptive loading feature for consistent run performance, run preview for improved lab efficiency, and expanded application support with functionality to sequence shorter and longer fragments of DNA.
  • Commenced shipment of Kinnex RNA kits enabling scalable, cost-effective full-length RNA sequencing on PacBio Revio and Sequel IIe and received orders from over 70 customers through December 31.
  • Expect fourth quarter 2023 and annual consumable revenue of approximately $18.9 million and $63.4 million, respectively, with approximately 67% of consumable revenue from Revio in the fourth quarter for an annualized pull-through of approximately $385 thousand.
  • Shipped 44 Revio sequencing systems for revenue during the fourth quarter of 2023, bringing the Revio installed base to 173 systems as of December 31, 2023. Shipped 20 Sequel IIe systems for revenue for the full year 2023, bringing the cumulative systems shipped to 532 as of December 31, 2023.

PacBio reported preliminary, unaudited revenue of approximately $58.4 million for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2023. Preliminary instrument revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 is expected to be approximately $35.1 million, compared with $6.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2022. Preliminary consumables revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 is expected to be approximately $18.9 million, compared with $16.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2022. Preliminary service and other revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 is expected to be approximately $4.4 million, compared with $4.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2022.

Total preliminary cash, cash equivalents, and investments balance as of December 31, 2023, is expected to be approximately $631 million.

PacBio is scheduled to present at the 42nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on January 10, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time. PacBio plans to make the presentation available on the Events & Presentations Section of PacBio's website at investor.pacificbiosciences.com. The information posted on or that can be accessed through PacBio's website, including PacBio's updated corporate presentation, is not incorporated by reference into this press release, and the inclusion of PacBio's website address is an inactive textual reference only.

The preliminary unaudited financial information set forth above is subject to revision and is anticipated to be finalized in February 2024. PacBio's final, audited financial results could differ materially from the preliminary estimates above, which are not a comprehensive statement of PacBio's financial results and are not necessarily indicative of the results to be expected as of or for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2023, or any future period. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these preliminary estimates. PacBio expects to report its fourth quarter 2023 results during a conference call in February, at which point it will discuss its 2023 financial results in more detail.

Guidance

PacBio continues to target compound annual revenue growth of 40% to 50% through 2026 based on a 2022 revenue base of $128.3 million, representing a 2026 revenue target of over $500 million.  PacBio expects to share 2024 guidance on its fourth-quarter earnings conference call in February 2024.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pacbio-announces-record-preliminary-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-revenue-growing-113-and-56-respectively-302028151.html

Biden: 'Vote For Me Or Hitler Wins'

 by Jim Bovard,

“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election.

At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” A few minutes before that uplifting assertion, Biden accused Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported last week that Biden campaign aides plan to go “full Hitler” on Trump, making “a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.” A few weeks ago, the Biden campaign posted a graphic on Twitter comparing Trump and Hitler’s rhetoric.

Biden continually equated democracy with freedom. And whatever is good for democracy is “close enough for government work” to freedom. Biden declared, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” Unless Team Biden disapproves of your thoughts, of course.

Biden neglected to explain why his vision of democracy justifies the near-total suppression of freedom of speech for his opponents. On July 4, Federal Judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” and a federal appeals court condemned Team Biden for “suppressing millions of protected free-speech postings by American citizens”—mostly by conservatives and Republicans.

“If only Uncle Joe had known about that abuse,” right? Like hell. Biden’s Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail at the Supreme Court to preserve his power to secretly censor anyone the feds claim is spouting disinformation, perhaps including denying that Biden is God’s gift to America.

Another key to Biden’s vision of democracy is that the president is entitled to imprison peaceful protestors who opposed him. Biden proved the villainy of Trump supporters by touting case numbers from January 6: “Since that day more than 1,200 people have been charged for the assault on the capitol, and nearly 900 of them have been convicted and they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”

Biden neglected to quote the bombshell Washington Post report today revealing that vast numbers of the January 6 charges have been crap cases. Federal judges have rejected Biden Justice Department sentencing demands in almost 90% of the January 6 cases—an astounding record. If those cases were not being tried by juries overstocked with federal employees and NPR devotees, the prosecutions would have crashed and burned long ago.

The Supreme Court may obliterate many of the cases. More than 320 of the convictions against J-6 protestors hinge on a bizarre contortion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after corporations destroyed documents sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“The average sentence for those convicted of obstructing an official proceeding has been 39 months,” the Post reported. Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi warns that the Supreme Court taking that case is a “red flag and a loud gong” because that law was the “North Star” used by prosecutors. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden twist of the 2002 law, that will make the January 6 prosecutions look like one of the worst witch hunts in American history.

Yet, according to Team Biden, the real problem is that not enough lives have been ruined for sinful thoughts on January 6. Last Thursday, Matthew Graves, Biden’s chief prosecutor for the District of Columbia, issued a warning of potentially thousands of more January 6 indictments: “If a person knowingly entered a restricted area [near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021] without authorization, they already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake: Thousands of people occupied that area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.” Talking about hounding people who merely were in the general vicinity of the Capitol confirms that for Team Biden, “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism.”

Actually, Biden’s FBI already classifies all the people arrested for January 6 Capitol clash offenses as domestic terrorists—even people busted for “parading without a permit.” The FBI presumes that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI whistleblower revealed in congressional testimony in May 2023 that FBI headquarters pressured FBI agents to treat anyone who attended the January 6 protests as a criminal suspect. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to unjustifiably conduct warrantless searches on 23,132 Americans citizens suspected of January 6 offenses “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras.

Biden assured the audience that “we still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.” Okay, but what if the president or the vice president uses the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware as email aliases to hustle business deals for a family member? Is it OK for them to slip the law then?

The only way to assume that Biden is not “above the law” is to assume that his decrees alone are the law. The Supreme Court struck down his COVID vaccine mandate, his moratorium for evicting deadbeat renters, his $500 billion federal student loan forgiveness scheme, and numerous other Biden policies.

Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This is the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.

Biden castigated Trump as the “Election Denier in Chief,” a new offense not yet been codified in the statute book. Biden endlessly warned that Trump posed a deadly threat to both freedom and democracy. Biden campaign masterminds were clever enough to permit an unknown local politician to deliver the “takeaway” from the day’s events. Biden was preceded at the podium by Dauphin County commissioner candidate Justin Douglass, who proclaimed that “Donald Trump represents a clear and present danger” to democracy. Since Trump is the ultimate enemy of the Constitution, anything that Biden and his campaign does to banish Trump from the ballot will be pro-democracy.

Obviously, if Americans value democracy, then the presidential candidate favored by the most voters in recent polls must not be allowed on the ballot. Team Biden favors a version of “Guardian Democracy” where voters are only permitted to cast ballots for candidates that the ruling class approves. This is part and parcel with the Democratic Party’s plan to let all future elections be determined by ballot harvesting and tsunamis of unverified mail-in ballots.

Why should we believe that democracy dies unless Biden gets four more years to violate the Constitution, censor and jail his opponents, and domineer practically every aspect of Americans’ lives (“step away from that gas stove before we have to hurt you”)?  As Thomas Jefferson declared long ago, “An elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jim-bovard-biden-says-vote-me-or-hitler-wins

Fate Starts Phase 1 Trial for FT825 / ONO-8250 in HER2-expressing Advanced Solid Tumors

 iPSC-derived CAR T-cell Product Candidate Incorporates Seven Synthetic Controls of Cell Function including a Novel HER2-targeted Antigen Binding Domain

Phase 1 Study is Being Conducted in Collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/fate-therapeutics-announces-initiation-of-phase-1-clinical-trial-for-ft825-ono-8250-in-patients-with-her2-expressing-advanced-solid-tumors/

Bill Gross Casts Shade on Treasuries, Sees 10-Year ‘Overvalued’ at 4%

 

  • Recommends shorter-end notes for those who want to invest
  • Treasuries rebound after selloff last week as oil prices slide

Fresh from getting a big call right on yields toward the end of last year, former bond king Bill Gross just signaled he is now steering clear of Treasuries.

Ten-year US debt is “overvalued,” with similar-dated Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities at a 1.80% yield the better choice if one needs to buy bonds, “I don’t” he wrote in a post on X.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-09/gross-casts-shade-on-treasuries-sees-10-year-overvalued-at-4

Parks Service Seeks To Remove William Penn Statue To Make Philadelphia More "Welcome And Inclusive"

 New mayor, same woke insanity. 

The National Park Service in Philadelphia is now looking for public comment on its plans to "rehabilitate" Welcome Park in the Old City section of Philadelphia by removing the park's statue of William Penn. In other words, we're back to tearing down statues again...

After all, why keep a racist, misogynistic, totally un-woke monument honoring the patriarchy of William Penn at...<checks notes>...the park located at the site of of William Penn's former home? It's not like he founded the province of Pennsylvania or something...

The "Welcome Park" site was completed in its current form back in 1982, according to 6ABC, who says that park officials want to "reenvision the park and expand the interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia to make it more welcoming and inclusive for visitors."

This initiative has involved consultation with representatives from various indigenous groups such as the Haudenosaunee, Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, Shawnee Tribe, and Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

The NPS is seeking public comment on the proposed plan here. "The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches," their website says.

Most people just want to know when the insanity is going to stop...

...and why the National Park Service is spending and re-spending our tax money to build and then tear down statutes...

Perhaps its another job for the Italians in South Philly who took matters into their own hands defending the Christopher Columbus statue at Marconi Plaza some years back. As a refresher, here's how they handled the complaints of the woke: