Author: Reuters

By Mike Scarcella

(Reuters) – Pfizer has agreed to pay $93 million to settle antitrust claims by wholesale drug distributors that accused it of conspiring with India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories to delay sales of less expensive, generic versions of the cholesterol drug Lipitor.

Attorneys for Lipitor purchasers including Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc and Puerto Rico’s Drogueria Betances LLC disclosed the agreement in a filing on Wednesday in U.S. court in Trenton, New Jersey.

The distributors’ case will continue against Ranbaxy, the attorneys filing said.

The proposed settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, comes after more than a decade of litigation. Pfizer did not admit liability.

Pfizer in a statement called the allegations “factually and legally without merit.” It said the settlement was “fair, reasonable and the best way to resolve this litigation.”

A representative for Sun Pharma, which acquired Ranbaxy in 2014, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pfizer introduced Lipitor in 1997, and the drug drove more than $130 billion in sales during its first 14 years on the market.

The pharma distributors claimed Pfizer fraudulently sought to extend its patent rights over Lipitor. They accused the company of paying Ranbaxy to delay introducing a generic version of Lipitor and engaging in sham litigation with Ranbaxy over the drug.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the settlement provides “immediate economic relief” to class members and avoids the risk of continued litigation, potential appeals and no recovery. They said they will seek up to about $31 million in legal fees from the settlement fund.

The case is In re: Lipitor Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 3:12-cv-02389-PGS-JBD.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -A moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.

The company’s Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk’ SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the dark sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast, trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.

About 48 minutes after launch, the six-legged lander was shown being released from Falcon 9’s upper stage about 139 miles above Earth and drifting away on its voyage to the moon.

“IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander separation confirmed,” a mission controller was heard saying.

Moments later, mission operations in Houston received its first radio signals from Odysseus as the lander began an automated process of powering on its systems and orienting itself in space, according to webcast commentators.

Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Thursday’s launch came a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight.

The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which was also flying NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a private company had been unable to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from Israel and Japan.

Those mishaps illustrated the risks NASA faces in leaning more heavily on the commercial sector than it had in the past to realize its spaceflight goals.

Plans call for Odysseus to reach its destination after a weeklong flight, with a Feb. 22 landing at crater Malapert A near the moon’s south pole.

If successful, the flight would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.

The feat also would mark the first journey to the lunar surface under NASA’s Artemis moon program, as the U.S. races to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.

IM-1 is the latest test of NASA’s strategy of paying for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to slash the cost of the Artemis missions, envisioned as precursors to human exploration of Mars.

By contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA bought rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.

NASA announced last month that it was delaying its target date for a first crewed Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late 2026, while China has said it was aiming for 2030.

Small landers such as Nova-C are expected to get there first, carrying instruments to closely survey the lunar landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.

Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in the year with several small rovers.

Last month, Japan became the fifth country to place a lander on the moon, with its space agency JAXA achieving an unusually precise “pinpoint” touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth nation to land on the moon, after Russia failed in an attempt the same month.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries that have carried out successful soft lunar touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by achieving the first landing on the far side of the moon.

(Reporting by Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

By Lewis Krauskopf

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The number of S&P 500 companies discussing artificial intelligence has climbed to a new high in fourth-quarter conference calls, Goldman Sachs strategists said, in the latest sign AI is a focal point for markets and corporate America.

The proportion of S&P 500 companies mentioning “AI” rose to 36%, up from 31% in the third quarter, Goldman strategists said in a research note published late Wednesday, at which point they said 360 companies representing 80% of the index’s market cap had reported results.

Information technology stayed the sector with the most companies discussing AI, while energy had the largest increase in companies discussing the technology, according to the strategists led by David Kostin.

“Several companies discussed the strong demand for their AI product offerings and services,” Goldman said in the note. “Many companies have also sought to weave AI into existing product offerings to improve the end-user’s experience and drive further demand.”

Companies also noted that spending on capital expenditures and research and development “will likely rise in the near term as they ramp up AI investments,” Goldman said.

The Goldman report is in line with a Reuters analysis earlier in the fourth-quarter reporting season that found AI mentions picking up.

Such management enthusiasm has been reflected in stock performance as well, according to Goldman.

A Goldman stock basket of companies pursuing or enabling AI technology outperformed the equal-weight S&P 500 by 19 percentage points year-to-date as of Wednesday.

Shares of IBM rose to a more than 10-year high late last month after the company gave a better-than-expected revenue outlook backed by strong demand for its AI service.

Chipmaker Nvidia, which has been at the center of the frenzy over AI, has seen its shares soar nearly 50% this year after more than tripling in 2023, becoming the third largest U.S. company by market value, surpassing Amazon and Alphabet.

Nvidia’s quarterly results this coming Wednesday “will be closely watched as a barometer of AI momentum,” Goldman said.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Global stock indexes mostly rose, Treasury yields declined and the dollar weakened against the Japanese yen on Thursday after a larger-than-expected drop in U.S. retail sales in January prompted a slight repositioning of expectations for interest rate cuts.

The Commerce Department report showed retail sales dropped 0.8% last month, the biggest fall since February 2023. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales dipping 0.1%.

However, winter storms were seen as possible factors affecting the data, with economists noting that a fairly healthy labor market remains supportive for consumer spending.

A separate report showed initial jobless claims fell 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 212,000 for the week ended Feb. 10, slightly below the 220,000 estimate.

Investors are closely watching economic data for clues on when the Federal Reserve might begin cutting interest rates.

Bets for an at least 25-basis-point rate cut in May edged up to 40.6%, while odds for June stood at 82%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.

A warmer reading of U.S. inflation earlier this week prompted traders to cut the chances of a prompt rate cut from the Fed, which lifted the dollar and sparked a sell-off in the fixed income market.

Traders also are once again watching dollar/yen as it topped 150 in the last few days, a critical level that puts the market on alert for possible Japanese intervention to weaken its currency.

The yen strengthened despite unexpectedly weak Japanese gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2023, which saw the country overtaken by Germany as the world’s third-largest economy.

Against the yen, the dollar was down 0.47% at 149.83. The dollar index fell 0.45% at 104.21, while the euro was up 0.49% at 1.0778.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note fell 5 basis points to 4.212% and was on track for a second straight decline following a jump on Tuesday after the hot reading on consumer prices.

“Clearly the retail sales came in somewhat below expectations and fits with our narrative that this is going to be a slower growth environment as we traverse 2024, but one where we still expect that there will be persistent economic growth, meaning that our base case is avoiding a recession in mid-2024,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Billings, Montana.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 229.41 points, or 0.61%, to 38,653.68, the S&P 500 gained 13.69 points, or 0.27%, to 5,014.71 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 12.74 points, or 0.08%, to 15,846.41.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 4.33 points, or 0.58%, to 749.28, while Europe’s STOXX 600 index rose 0.67%.

Earlier on Thursday, enthusiasm for all things AI also pushed Taiwan stocks to a record high.

Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.2% higher, climbing as high as 38,188.74 during the session, the most since January 1990.

U.S. crude gained 1.06% to $77.45 a barrel and Brent rose to $82.37 per barrel on the day. Spot gold added 0.75% to $2,007.29 an ounce.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London, Ankur Banerjee in Singapore and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Tomasz Janowski and Susan Fenton)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) – Shares of smaller AI firms rallied on Thursday after the world’s most dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker, Nvidia, disclosed stake in them, offering clues on its growth strategy.

The rally showed Nvidia’s growing influence in the AI world as its market value grows at a scorching pace, making it the third most-valuable U.S. company.

Its largest investment of $147.3 million was in Arm Holdings, the chip designer that Nvidia failed to buy after the $80 billion deal hit the antitrust hurdle two years ago.

Nvidia had indicated interest in purchasing shares of Arm during the British company’s Nasdaq debut last year. Shares of Arm were up nearly 4%.

Nvidia disclosed its stakes as of Dec. 31 in a 13F filing late on Wednesday. The regulatory disclosure is closely watched by investors and is generally associated with moves made by fund managers rather than public companies.

Shares of biotech firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals, in which Nvidia invested nearly $76 million, gained 12.7%.

Last year, Nvidia had said it would invest in Recursion to speed up training of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based firm’s AI models for drug discovery.

The Silicon Valley megacap firm also invested nearly $3.7 million in conversational voice assistants developer SoundHound AI, sending its shares 53% higher to $3.47.

SoundHound shares were the most actively traded across U.S. exchanges minutes after the opening bell, with 70 million shares changing hands, nearly seven times its 25-day moving average volume, according to LSEG data.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said Nvidia’s backing solidifies SoundHound’s brand within the “AI revolution” and could be the beginning of a broader investment into the company.

Nvidia also bought stake in Israel-based medical device company Nano-X Imaging, which uses AI software to analyze reports. Nano-X shares rose 80% higher.

Autonomous driving technology TuSimple Holdings, which delisted from the Nasdaq last week, drew $3 million in capital from the chipmaker.

“This is a way to collaborate with one of the smartest people in the business.. and gives Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang the opportunity to collaborate on projects moving forward,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital.

Shares of other micro-cap AI firms rose in tandem, with Guardforce AI adding 10% and BigBear.ai Holdings gaining 7.7%.

Global X Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF was up 1%.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru, Additional reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Johann Cherian; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) -Shares of five smaller AI firms surged on Thursday before the bell after the world’s most dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker, Nvidia, disclosed stakes in them, offering clues on its growth strategy.

Nvidia’s regulatory disclosure came close on the heels of it becoming the third most-valuable U.S. company, fueled by a rapid rise demand for its data center chips.

Its largest investment of $147.3 million was in Arm Holdings, the chip designer that Nvidia failed to buy after the $80 billion deal hit the antitrust hurdle two years ago.

Nvidia had indicated interest in purchasing shares of Arm during the British company’s Nasdaq debut last year.

Shares of Arm that has said its processors complement Nvidia’s chips for AI work in data centers were up 2.1%.

Shares of biotech firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals, in which Nvidia invested nearly $76 million, gained 18.3%.

Last year, Nvidia said it would invest in Recursion to speed up training of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based firm’s AI models for drug discovery.

The Silicon Valley megacap firm also invested nearly $3.7 million in conversational voice assistants developer SoundHound AI, sending its shares 23% higher.

It bought shares of Israel-based medical device company Nano-X Imaging, which uses AI software to analyze reports. Nano-X shares rose 80% higher.

Autonomous driving technology TuSimple Holdings, which delisted from the Nasdaq last week, also drew $3 million in capital from the chipmaker.

“This is a way to collaborate with one of the smartest people in the business.. and gives Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang the opportunity to collaborate on projects moving forward,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital.

Nvidia revealed its new stakes as of Dec. 31 in a 13-F filing with the U.S. SEC late on Wednesday.

SoundHound shares were the most actively traded across U.S. stocks trading before the bell, with 29 million shares changing hands by 8:05 a.m. ET, nearly three times its 25-day moving average, according to LSEG data.

Shares of other small-cap chipmakers rose in tandem, with C3.ai adding 1.4% and BigBear.ai Holdings gaining 7.3%.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru, Additional reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Johann Cherian; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Arun Koyyur)

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON (Reuters) – Global stocks rose on Thursday, powered by a rally in technology shares that pushed Japan’s Nikkei to a new 34-year high, while the dollar steadied around three-month peaks as investors assessed the chances of when U.S. rates might fall.

A warmer reading of U.S. inflation earlier this week prompted traders to cut the chances of a prompt rate cut from the Federal Reserve, which lifted the dollar and sparked a sell-off in the fixed income market.

However, with other measures of economic activity pointing to resilient U.S. growth, analysts say investors are banking increasingly on a soft landing – a gradual slowing in growth and inflation that does not result in recession.

Stocks particularly have got a boost this week and on Thursday were fired up by another scorching rally in big U.S. tech shares, which tend to be more sensitive to the growth outlook, that spread to other markets.

The MSCI All-World index, which is trading around two-year highs, was up 0.27%, while in Europe, the STOXX 600 benchmark rose 0.6%, lifted by strong semiconductor stocks and auto shares after results from carmakers Renault and Stellantis.

The dollar was holding around its highest in three months, buoyed by the fact that investors are banking on far fewer rate cuts this year than they were just weeks ago.

“The market is assessing the probabilities here around the rate outlook – probably a soft landing where growth is acceptable and inflation continues to converge towards 2%, I think, remains the market’s base-case scenario, and our base case too,” Samy Chaar, chief economist at Lombard Odier, said.

“What has totally shifted is the fact that the inflation risk has collapsed, but the risk of some form of decent growth that is leading to sticky inflation has increased and therefore pricing for cuts has come down,” he said.

Optimism about the growth outlook sent Wall Street stocks higher overnight, as chipmaker Nvidia overtook Apple as the third-largest U.S. company by market value.

AI BOOM

Enthusiasm for all things AI also pushed Taiwan stocks to a record high on Thursday, with chipmaker TSMC up nearly 8%.

Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.2% higher, climbing as high as 38,188.74 during the session, the most since January 1990, inching closer towards the record high set in December 1989.

Traders are now pricing in an 82% chance of a Fed cut in June, the CME FedWatch tool showed. Markets at the end of 2023 had priced in rate cuts starting as early as March.

Investors now anticipate 97 basis points of cuts in the year, closer to the 75 bps the Fed had forecast in December.

U.S. retail sales numbers later on could offer some insight into how consumer spending held up in January.

Central bankers everywhere will be a little less keen on cutting rates if the Fed delays, said Ben Bennett, APAC investment strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

“But it’s only one inflation print, and we all know how hard it is to forecast inflation, so the market impact is probably relatively small unless we get a second high print in a row.”

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said on Wednesday the Fed should be wary of waiting too long before it cuts rates.

That sent Treasury yields lower, with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes down 4 basis points to 4.224%.

Separate data releases on Thursday showed the economies of Japan and the United Kingdom slipped into recession. The Japanese yen strengthened marginally but was still around its weakest since November. The dollar was down 0.3% on the day at 150.04 yen.

The 150 level has been seen in the past as a potential catalyst for intervention by Japanese monetary authorities. It was just past this level that led them to intervene to shore up the yen in late 2022.

Sterling, meanwhile, eased 0.1% to $1.2551.

Brent crude traded down 0.6% at $81.08 a barrel, while U.S. crude eased 0.68% to $76.12.

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Tomasz Janowski and Susan Fenton)

(Reuters) – Nvidia’s bet on smaller AI firms from healthcare companies Nano-X Imaging and Recursion to chipmaker Arm Holdings boosted their shares in premarket trading on Thursday.

Nvidia, the biggest winner of the AI boom, revealed its new stakes in the firms as of Dec. 31 in a 13-F filing with the U.S. SEC late on Wednesday.

Fellow chip designer Arm Holdings drew the biggest investment from Nvidia, worth $147.3 million. The British company has said its processors complement Nvidia’s chips for AI work in data centers.

Arm shares gained 2.6% on Thursday after surging more than 60% in value since its strong quarterly forecast last week.

Shares of biotech company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, in which Nvidia invested nearly $76 million, gained 16.5%. About eight months ago, Nvidia said it would invest in Recursion to speed up training of the biotech firm’s AI models for drug discovery.

The Silicon Valley megacap firm also invested nearly $3.7 million in voice AI platform SoundHound AI, sending its shares 72% higher.

It bought shares of Israel-based medical device company Nano-X Imaging, which uses AI software to analyze reports. Nano-X shares rose 42.5% higher.

Autonomous driving technology TuSimple Holdings, which delisted from Nasdaq last week, also drew $3 million in capital from the chipmaker.

Shares of other small-cap chipmakers rose in tandem, with C3.ai Inc adding 1.5% and BigBear.ai Holdings gaining 8.9%.

Nvidia overtook Alphabet and Amazon.com this week to become the third most valuable U.S. company.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON (Reuters) -Global equities rose on Thursday, powered by a rally in technology shares that pushed Japan’s Nikkei to a new 34-year high, while the dollar steadied around three-month peaks as investors assessed the chances of when U.S. rates might fall.

A warmer reading of U.S. inflation earlier this week prompted traders to cut the chances of a prompt rate cut from the Federal Reserve, which lifted the dollar and sparked a sell-off in the fixed income market.

However, with other measures of economic activity pointing to resilient U.S. growth, analysts say investors are banking increasingly on a soft landing – a gradual slowing in growth and inflation that does not result in recession.

Stocks particularly have got a boost this week and on Thursday were fired up by another scorching rally in big U.S. tech shares, which tend to be more sensitive to the growth outlook, that spread to other markets.

The MSCI All-World index, which is trading around two-year highs, was up 0.25%, while in Europe, the STOXX 600 benchmark rose 0.6%, lifted by strong semiconductor stocks and auto shares after results from carmakers Renault and Stellantis.

The dollar was holding around its highest in three months, buoyed by the fact that investors are banking on far fewer rate cuts this year than they were just weeks ago.

“The market is assessing the probabilities here around the rate outlook – probably a soft landing where growth is acceptable and inflation continues to converge towards 2%, I think, remains the market’s base-case scenario, and our base case too,” Samy Chaar, chief economist at Lombard Odier, said.

“What has totally shifted is the fact that the inflation risk has collapsed, but the risk of some form of decent growth that is leading to sticky inflation has increased and therefore pricing for cuts has come down,” he said.

Optimism about the growth outlook sent Wall Street stocks higher overnight, as chipmaker Nvidia overtook Apple as the third-largest U.S. company by market value.

AI BOOM

Enthusiasm for all things AI also pushed Taiwan stocks to a record high on Thursday, with chipmaker TSMC up nearly 8%.

Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.2% higher, climbing as high as 38,188.74 during the session, the most since January 1990, inching closer towards the record high set in December 1989.

Traders are now pricing in an 82% chance of a Fed cut in June, the CME FedWatch tool showed. Markets at the end of 2023 had priced in rate cuts starting as early as March.

Investors now anticipate 97 basis points of cuts in the year, closer to the 75 bps the Fed had forecast in December.

U.S. retail sales numbers later on could offer some insight into how consumer spending held up in January.

Central bankers everywhere will be a little less keen on cutting rates if the Fed delays, said Ben Bennett, APAC investment strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

“But it’s only one inflation print, and we all know how hard it is to forecast inflation, so the market impact is probably relatively small unless we get a second high print in a row.”

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said on Wednesday said the Fed should be wary of waiting too long before it cuts rates.

That sent Treasury yields lower, with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes down 4 basis points to 4.224%.

Separate data releases on Thursday showed the economies of Japan and the United Kingdom slipped into recession. The Japanese yen strengthened marginally, edging below 150 per dollar, but still at its weakest since November.

The 150 level has been seen in the past as a potential catalyst for intervention by Japanese monetary authorities. It was just past this level that led them to intervene to shore up the yen in late 2022.

Sterling, meanwhile, eased 0.1% to $1.2553.

Brent crude traded down 0.5% at $81.19 a barrel, while U.S. crude eased 0.6% to $76.22.

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Tomasz Janowski)

By Fergal Smith

(Reuters) -Canada’s main stock index on Wednesday clawed back much of the previous day’s sharp decline as technology and industrial shares led broad-based gains for the market.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index ended up 304.43 points, or 1.5%, at 20,889.40, its biggest advance since Dec. 13.

The index was down 2.3% on Tuesday after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data rattled investors.

“It’s responding in my opinion to a very deep oversold condition that we got yesterday on a short-term basis,” said Sid Mokhtari, chief market technician for CIBC Capital Markets.

“We are getting better participation with the industrials, stable price momentum within the financial sector in both the U.S. and Canada, and the technology complex is still considered to be the leadership area of focus.”

The technology sector rallied 3%, industrials were up 2.4% and heavily weighted financials added 1.7%.

Financials were helped by a 7.2% gain for Intact Financial after the insurance company reported fourth-quarter results.

Alternative financial services company goeasy Ltd also reported quarterly earnings, beating estimates. Its shares climbed 8%.

All 10 major sectors ended higher but energy was barely up as the price of oil settled 1.6% lower at $76.64 a barrel on surging U.S. crude inventories.

Shares of CAE Inc fell 9.7% after the civil aviation training company missed analysts’ estimates for quarterly earnings.

(Reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Ravi Prakash Kumar and Sandra Maler)