1.MICROSOFT: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Microsoft Corp’s LinkedIn Corp another chance to try to stop rival hiQ Labs Inc from harvesting personal data from the professional networking platform’s public profiles – a practice that LinkedIn contends threatens the privacy of its users.
The justices threw out a lower court ruling that had barred LinkedIn from denying hiQ access to the information that LinkedIn members had made publicly available.
At issue is whether companies can use a federal anti-hacking law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, to block competitors from harvesting or “scraping” vast amounts of customer data from public-facing parts of a website.
The LinkedIn case underscores the increasing importance of personal data on the internet and the ability of companies to profit from that information, while raising questions over who can control and use an individual’s data – and for what purpose.
LinkedIn, which has more than 750 million members, told hiQ in 2017 to stop scraping LinkedIn’s public profiles or face liability under the anti-hacking law.
For its part, hiQ uses the data for products that analyze employee skills or alert employers when they could be looking for a new job. It said LinkedIn issued the threat around the same time LinkedIn announced a similar service to hiQ’s.
It sued in federal court, accusing LinkedIn of anti-competitive conduct, and a federal judge in 2017 granted its request for a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn.
2.NOVAVAX -Novavax Inc on Monday said its COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective, including against a variety of concerning variants of the coronavirus in a large, late-stage U.S.-based clinical trial.
The study of nearly 30,000 volunteers in the United States and Mexico puts Novavax on track to file for emergency authorization in the United States and elsewhere in the third quarter of 2021, the company said.
The protein-based vaccine was more than 93% effective against the more easily transmissible predominant coronavirus variants that have caused concern among scientists and public health officials, Novavax said.
Protein-based vaccines are a conventional approach that use purified pieces of the virus to spur an immune response, such as those used against whooping cough and shingles.
While the trial was being conducted, the virus variant first discovered in the United Kingdom and now known as the Alpha variant was the most common circulating in the United States, the company said.
The concerning variants first identified in Brazil, South Africa and India were also detected among the trial’s participants, Novavax’s head of research and development, Dr. Gregory Glenn, told Reuters.
The vaccine was 91% effective among volunteers at high risk of severe infection and 100% effective in preventing moderate and severe cases of COVID-19. It was roughly 70% effective against virus variants that Novavax was unable to identify, Glenn said.
3. TESLA :Tesla shares were up a little over 1% Monday as traders reacted positively to CEO Elon Musk’s tweet that the company would resume allowing Bitcoin transactions once “there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend.”
The shares shrugged off Canaccord lowering its target for the stock to $812 from $974. The share currently trades 24% below Canaccord’s target price.
Traders, crypto miners, speculators and supporters of digital currencies treat Musk as their unofficial spokesperson, looking out for his views on the cryptos and catching every word or meme he posts to decide their trades.
So when Musk on May 13 said Tesla would no longer be accepting bitcoin from buyers of Tesla vehicles because of their high energy consumption, many questioned the crypto’s raison d’être. Not much later, Musk was championing Dogecoin .
In the days that followed, bitcoin fell to $30,000-levels, losing more than a third of its value in a single day on May 19 before recovering. Many other cryptocurrencies fell even more sharply.
Musk also said that Tesla sold about 10% of holdings to confirm bitcoin could be liquidated easily without moving the market.
4.WENDY’S :-The Wendy’s Co jumped more than 1% after Piper Sandler reiterated a buy-equivalent rating.
Wendy’s same-store sales remain in the “+mid-teens% range (higher sequentially) driven in part by menu innovation efforts and the new app/loyalty program,” analyst Nicole Regan wrote in a note, StreetInsider reported.
The analyst reiterated an overweight rating and $27 price target following positive checks for May. “Our domestic checks for May validate the notion that sales are not the restaurant industry’s issue (especially compared to labor),” Regan said. “Consumers have all but flipped a switch, noting sales channels are shifting from drive-thru back to dine-in. Most (if not all) concepts are up across the board.”
But, she noted the difficulty in finding help, with 87% of operators in May unable to fully staff restaurants.
Meanwhile, Northcoast Research upgraded Wendy’s to buy from neutral with a price target $30.
The Cheesecake Factory also got a boost, as Webush added it to its best ideas list, but apparently that’s not good enough for investors, who were pushing shares down 0.3%.
5. APPLE – Apple Inc. stock has been trading in a rectangle trading range over the past several weeks forming a resistance line and level of support. At some point, the stock is expected to either break the resistance or the support. Read more to learn how to take advantage of this trade.Apple Inc. (AAPL) designs a wide variety of consumer electronic devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, smartwatches, and TV boxes, among others, with the majority of revenue coming from the iPhone.
The company’s Services and Wearables businesses are expected to drive sales growth this year. In fact, the Services segment has emerged as the company’s new cash cow. AAPL’s entrance into autonomous vehicles and augmented reality could serve as a long-term growth opportunity.
The company had a whopping $70 billion in cash on hand as of the most reported quarter. This certainly compares favourably to its short-term debt of $13 billion. AAPL also has very high return on equity (110.3%) and ROIC (41.4%) ratios.
