American Airlines Echoes Delta in Warning of Demand Slowdown

American Airlines Group Inc. is seeing a slowdown in demand because of surging coronavirus cases, signaling a weaker outlook heading into the year-end holidays.

After a strong start for the fourth quarter, a deceleration in net bookings growth began before Thanksgiving and has persisted into this month, American said in a regulatory filing Friday. As a result, the company expects its daily cash consumption to be at the high end of an earlier forecast of $25 million to $30 million.

The company’s caution follows a similar warning Thursday by Delta Air Lines Inc., which said it may burn more cash than expected in the fourth quarter because of the slowdown. While passenger totals jumped over the Thanksgiving holiday, they were still only about 40% of last year’s levels.

American said it expects to end the year with more than $14 billion in liquidity.

The shares climbed 1.6% to $16.35 ahead of regular trading in New York, extending gains amid optimism about coronavirus vaccines and the potential for more federal stimulus to tide airlines over during a tough winter.

Stock Alert: Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Shares Down 11% Despite Upbeat Q3

Shares of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings Inc. (OLLI) are currently trading at $79.77, down $9.73 or 10.87% Friday morning. Trading volume is surging over 22.3 million versus an average volume of 760K shares.

The company reported Q3 net income of $45.2 million, or $0.68 per share, compared to $27.0 million, or $0.41 per share, last year.

Adjusted net income increased to $43.2 million, or $0.65 per share, from $26.8 million, or $0.41 per share, in the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.58 per share for the quarter. Analysts’ estimate typically exclude certain special items.

Net sales grew 26.7% to $414.4 million from $327.0 million last year, driven by a comparable store sales increase of 15.3% and strong new store performance.

Stock Alert: PagerDuty Jumps On Upbeat Earnings

Shares of digital operations management company PagerDuty, Inc. (PD) are rising more than 18% Friday morning after reporting better-than-expected third quarter results.

Third-quarter net loss per share was $0.26, compared to net loss of $0.20 per share in the same quarter a year ago.

Loss on an adjusted basis was $0.09 per share,that beat the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for a loss of $0.10 per share.

Total revenue for the quarter was $53.8 million, up 25.8% year-over-year.

For the fourth quarter, the company sees revenue to be in the range of $57.0 million – $58.0 million and adjusted loss per share in the range of $0.12 – $0.11. Analysts see loss per share of $0.10 on revenue of $55.6 million for the quarter.

For the full-year, revenue is expected in the range of $211.0 million – $212.0 million and adjusted loss per share to be in the range of $0.30 – $0.29. The consensus estimate for revenue is at $208.72 and for loss per share is at $0.29 per share for the period.

PD touched a new high of $40.04 this morning and currently trading at $38.57.

Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Libra In January

Social media giant Facebook Inc.’s (FB) new cryptocurrency Libra could reportedly launch as soon as January but in a limited format.

According to a report from The Financial Times, the Libra Association, which has 27 members including Facebook, had announced plans to launch digital versions of several traditional currencies in April. However now it is only planning to launch a single coin backed by the dollar. The other currencies and the composite would be rolled out at a later point.

Libra’s exact launch date would depend on when the project receives approval to operate as a payments service from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.

Meanwhile the scaling back of the project comes after it received warning from global regulators that the cryptocurrency could threaten monetary stability.

Initiated in June 2019, the Libra Association faced major regulatory scrutiny and several member companies like PayPal and MasterCard left the project.

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Biotech group to sue Trump administration over drug pricing plan -STAT news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The biotech pharmaceutical industry is filing a lawsuit on Friday against the Trump administration over new U.S. rules to lower drug prices, STAT news reported citing a statement from the companies’ lobbying group.

The Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s lawsuit, to be filed later on Friday, will seek to block implementation of the administration’s so-called most favored nations drug price policy, the news organization said.