The Mexican peso gained and Asian stocks surged slightly ahead of this week’s action. Meanwhile, a report issued late last week revealed that the U.S. economy is garnering strength as 156,000 people got a job in September.
It was a big weekend for the tech industry, with Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) all unveiling new developments over the weekend.
Here’s what’s going on with these companies as Monday trading begins:
Mylan NV (MYL)
MYL shares are rallying rapidly this morning amid a settlement between the EpiPen maker and several governmental agencies.
Mylan will pay $465 million to the Department of Justice and other agencies amid allegations that the company was gaming the system to get more money from Medicaid. Specifically, Mylan was paying a rebate as part of the Medicaid Drug Rebate program on its name-brand EpiPen that was calculated based on the formula for generic drugs.
Mylan made the settlement despite insisting that the EpiPen has been classified as a generic drug for years.
While the drugmaker did drop its annual earnings forecast from a range of $4.85 to $5.15 per share to a range of $4.70 to $4.90 per share, the market seemed relieved that this puts one large hurdle behind Mylan.
MYL shares were up 12% in Monday’s premarket trade.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY)
The lousy 2016 for BMY shares continues this morning amid a disappointing set of results for its lung-cancer therapy Opdivo.
Bristol-Myers Squibb released the final primary analysis of the CheckMate-26 trial and found that Opdivo reached a median progression-free survival of 4.2 months for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors expressed higher levels of the protein PD-L1, versus 5.9 months with existing chemotherapy treatments.
Most of the results from the CheckMate-26 trial, which focused on patients with varying levels of PD-L1, were released in August and found Opdivo — an event that triggered a massive sell-off in BMY shares. Hurting matters further has been success from Merck & Co., Inc.(NYSE:MRK), whose Keytruda has been met with much more success.
UPDATE: Merck also provided additional information on Keytruda on Sunday that’s helping weigh BMY down. According to the company, on its own, Keytruda reduced deaths by 40% compared to chemotherapy alone and reduced disease progression by half. And when combined with chemotherapy drugs, it was far more likely to shrink tumors than a purely chemotherapy treatment.
Bristol-Myers Squibb is off more than 25% since then, and should open today another 6% lower.
Comcast Corporation (CMCSA)
Comcast is the brunt of a little consumer outrage after the introduction of a data cap for Internet users in 18 states.
The cap is set at 1 terabyte (TB) per month. An extra $10 will be charged for every additional 50 GB of data used, with users paying up to $200 for going over the limit. An unlimited data plan can be accessed for an additional $50 a month.
The Comcast limit already had been in place in 16 states.
CMCSA says that with the 1 TB limit, you can stream up to 15,000 hours of music or indulge in 12,000 hours of gaming per month. It insists that the cap will affect a tiny number of its customers.
Still, that didn’t stop Comcast internet subscribers from taking to social media to complain about the cap. Specifically, avid gamers and streamers are worried that they will, in fact, be hit by the cap.
The move won’t affect most customers as this cap is set at one terabyte (TB) per month. However, avid gamers may find the move frustrating as certain games require more data than that.
CMCSA stock is up 15% year-to-date.
