Why Fisker, Workhorse Group, Hyliion, and Lordstown Motors Dropped Today
U.S.-based electric-vehicle companies are in the headlines with another option coming to the public markets.
(Bloomberg) -- 3D printer-maker Markforged Inc. has agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check company started by Eventbrite Inc. co-founder Kevin Hartz.The deal with Hartz’s special purpose acquisition company, One, values the combined equity at $2.1 billion, the companies said in a statement.Kevin Hartz’s, One’s chief executive officer, said in an interview that his SPAC looked at 200 companies before choosing Markforged.To support the transaction, the SPAC will raise $210 million from investors including Baron Capital Group, BlackRock Inc., Miller Value Partners, Wasatch Global Investors and Wellington Management. Microsoft Corp.’s Venture Fund and Porsche Automobil Holding SE will also participate in the private investment in public equity, or PIPE.One of Markforged’s rivals, Desktop Metal Inc., went public in December through a merger with another SPAC, Trine Acquisition Corp.Markforged, based in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 2013 and has raised $137 million to date, according to the statement. Some of its customers include Tesla Inc., Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc., its website shows.Shai Terem, Markforged’s chief executive officer, said that the company’s main products are 3D printers and related devices that cost from $5,000 to $180,000.Markforged’s also sells industrial-grade materials and software that let customers print 3D parts out of metal or composite materials, which are stronger than aluminum and can replace steel, he added.“We’re on a journey in manufacturing and have 10,000 customers and we think we can have 100,000 in the next few years,” Terem said.More SPACs AheadThe SPAC, One, went public in August after raising $215 million, including the so-called greenshoe overalottment, at $10 a unit. Its units were trading Wednesday at $14.42 at 2:59 p.m. in New York.This might not be the last SPAC deal from Hartz, who started a firm call A* (pronounced “A-star”) to sponsor blank-check companies.“Our SPAC is titled One and that implies a two, three and four. We really look up to the Sequoia Capitals of the world where they have a fund one, fund two, fund three,” Hartz said.Citigroup Inc. and William Blair advised Markforged on the transaction, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised One.(Updates with comments from executives starting in third paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Uber Technologies is a global company that is transforming the ride-sharing and meal delivery markets. After a much-hyped debut on May 10, 2019, Uber stock is one of the most watched IPO stocks today, but is Uber a buy right now in the current stock market rally? Uber is in the midst of a dramatic turnaround, as the company fights to turn a profit.
With the Postal Service looking elsewhere, what's next for this builder of electric delivery vehicles?
A leader in 3D printing for manufacturing is going public with a SPAC deal announced Wednesday. The SPAC Deal: Markforged is going public in a deal with One (NYSE: AONE) valuing the company at an enterprise value of $1.66 billion. The PIPE on the SPAC deal includes investments from existing Markforged investors Porsche Automobil and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). Shares of the new company are expected to trade as "MKFG" on the NYSE. Current One shareholders will own 10% of the company after the merger. About Markforged: Founded in 2013, Markforged is a leader in additive manufacturing. The company said it's reinventing the manufacturing process used by customers. Target industries for the company include aerospace, military, defense, space exploration, healthcare, medical, automotive and industrial. Markforged replaces plastic, steel and aluminum end use parts with easy to print metals. The company operates with three business lines of software, printers and materials. Customers for Markforged include Bosch, Schneider Electric, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, US Air Force, US Army, US Navy, NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Medtronic, Gillette, Bayer, Regeneron, Porsche, Honda, Tesla, Toyota, General Motors and Ford Motor. Related Link: 10 Top SPAC Picks For Investors To Consider In 2021 Growth Plans: Markforged is competing in a $13 trillion manufacturing industry globally. The company has products in over 10,000 facilities in 70 countries with plans to grow into more locations. The additive manufacturing market is expected to grow from $2 billion in 2012 to $18 billion in 2021, according to the company’s presentation. Additive manufacturing could be worth $118 billion by 2029. Financials: Markforged had revenue of around $70 million in fiscal 2020. The company is projecting revenue to hit $88 million in fiscal 2021 and $122 million in fiscal 2022. Revenue is seen hitting a compounded annual growth rate of 68% from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2025. Markforged competes with Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM), which also went public in a SPAC merger. Markforged states in its investor presentation that it has better gross margins than its competitor. In fiscal 2020, Desktop Metal had revenue of between $15 million and $20 million. Desktop Metal has a market cap of over $5 billion compared to a pro forma equity value of $2 billion for Markforged based on a share price of $10. Price Action: Shares of One closed up 20% to $13.66 on Wednesday. See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaJoby Aviation Lands SPAC Deal To Bring Urban Air Mobility Company PublicSecond Life? GameStop Spikes 103% As Reddit Stocks Surge Again© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Feb.24 -- Speaking about the new EU-China investment agreement, German MEP Sven Simon told Bloomberg's Maria Tadeo that there is a need for reciprocity in the bloc's trading relationship with China. "This relationship is reciprocally important but there is too little regulatory reciprocity today," Simon said.
There are signs some of the excessive leverage had been wrung out of the market, implying the potential for a fresh more to the upside, analysts said.
As Democrats press ahead with plans to pass a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package by a process that would bypass the need for Republican support, more than 150 CEOs of large American companies are urging bipartisan backing for the plan. The latest: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced Tuesday night that Democrats plan to pass their relief bill through the lower chamber on Friday. “The American people strongly support this bill, and we are moving swiftly to see it enacted into law,” he said on Twitter. On the Senate side, lawmakers are awaiting a ruling from the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, as to whether an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour can be included in the package under rules governing the special budget reconciliation process being used. A ruling is reportedly expected as early as Wednesday evening. CEOs back Biden’s plan: More than 150 top executives of large companies across a number of industries voiced support for the $1.9 trillion rescue package in a letter to lawmakers Wednesday. "Previous federal relief measures have been essential, but more must be done to put the country on a trajectory for a strong, durable recovery," the executives said in the letter first reported by CNN. "Congress should act swiftly and on a bipartisan basis to authorize a stimulus and relief package along the lines of the Biden-Harris administration's proposed American Rescue Plan." The most notable signatories include some heavyweights from the worlds of finance and technology: Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, who CNBC notes had previously backed former President Donald Trump. The CEOs of AT&T, Comcast, Intel, Mastercard, Visa and Well Fargo were also among those signing, as were the chief executives of American Airlines, JetBlue and United Airlines. The Business Roundtable, a CEO group, wrote a separate letter on Tuesday supporting “the swift enactment of additional COVID-19 rescue legislation” focused on public health needs and targeted aid to individuals and small businesses, but urging lawmakers to set aside the minimum wage increase for future legislation. American public also supports the Biden plan: A new Politico/Morning Consult poll adds to the number of surveys showing that a sizable majority of Americans, including Republicans, say they favor the Biden rescue package. The poll finds that 76% say they support the legislation, including 52% who “strongly” support it. Just 17% say they oppose it. More than seven in 10 independents and some 60% of Republicans say they back the Biden plan. (Other polls have found less than majority support among Republicans.) Why it matters: The letter from top business leaders gives Biden and Democrats more ammunition as they argue that their relief package is appropriately sized to meet the Covid crisis. Republicans have criticized the size and specifics of the Democratic bill, and it appears than no GOP lawmakers will support the plan. Like what you're reading? Sign up for our free newsletter.
European Union leaders vowed Thursday to accelerate the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and pressed pharmaceutical companies to respect their delivery commitments, as concern mounts about the spread of new variants of the virus. The leaders also said that restrictions, including on travel, should remain in place in many parts of the 27-nation bloc. COVID-19 has killed more than 531,000 people across the EU.
As of Feb. 19, only 8 full days into the 2021 filing season, the IRS received 34.69 million individual returns.
The U.S. House votes Friday on a bill to give you a third payment. Could there be another?
(Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank has a close eye on financial markets because a sudden rise in real interest rates could pull the rug out from under the economic recovery, Executive Board Member Isabel Schnabel said.“We will ensure that there is no unwarranted tightening of financing conditions,” she told LETA in an interview published Thursday. “A too abrupt increase in real interest rates on the back of improving global growth prospects could jeopardize the economic recovery. Therefore, we are monitoring financial market developments closely.”Schnabel’s remarks come just days after ECB President Christine Lagarde said officials were “closely monitoring” nominal bond yields.After injecting trillions into global markets to combat the coronavirus crisis, central bank policy makers ins major economies are now looking to push back against yields that may be rising too fast for ther economies.The jump is driven in part by spillovers from a faster U.S. upturn and President Joe Biden’s fiscal stimulus plans.The Bank of Korea warned it’ll intervene in the market if borrowing costs jump, Australia’s central bank has been forced to resume buying bonds to enforce its yield target and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand promised a prolonged period of stimulus even as the economic outlook there brightens.Schnabel said she’s seeing “encouraging signs” of recovery, with vaccinations improving and the global economy rebounding faster than the ECB anticipated.Although first-quarter gross domestic product is likely to be weaker than expected due to extended lockdowns, euro-area growth for this year as a whole should be in the “ballpark” of the ECB’s December forecast of 3.9%, she said.Corporate debt levels are likely to be higher as a result of the crisis and insolvencies could increase when state support measures are phased out. That could spill over into the financial sector, with a rise in non-performing loans.“Our analysis shows that euro-area banks should be able to cope with this as long as the support is not withdrawn too early and too abruptly, and as long as the overall conditions remain favorable, including the financing conditions provided by the ECB,” she said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Munger says the argument for diversification should be called 'diworsification.'
Here's what still has to happen, including the big vote scheduled for Friday.
(Bloomberg) -- Shares of GameStop Corp. doubled yesterday and jumped another 19% today. Options traders think the stock can do much better than that.The most-active option traded on the stock Thursday was a contract betting that GameStop shares would spike to $800 on Friday. Some 52,000 contracts changed hands during the session betting on this one-day gain of 636%For other options traders, it was a question of when GameStop would hit the $800 mark, not if. The seventh and eighth most-active contracts were call options wagering that the stock would reach $800 by next Friday or in three weeks. It’s hard to say whether the contracts were mainly bought or sold, two traders said.“It’s speculation gone wild, pure and simple,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC. “It is Exhibit A in the nuttiness that is associated with GameStop.”GameStop’s Reddit-driven roller-coaster ride that roiled markets last month is continuing this week, with shares more than doubling in the final 90 minutes of trading on Wednesday and rising as much as 101% on an intraday level on Tuesday. The rally came as popular tech names from Tesla Inc. to Zoom Video Communications Inc. were battered after U.S. 10-year Treasury yields spiked to 1.6%.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have filed their final financial disclosure forms (known as OGE 278e), covering their non-governmental income for 2020 and the first few weeks of 2021. Both give a...
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest Bitcoin fund is selling off faster than the cryptocurrency itself.The $32 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC) has plunged 20% this week, outpacing a 13% decline in the world’s largest cryptocurrency. GBTC’s once-massive premium to its underlying holdings has evaporated as a result, with the price of GBTC closing 0.7% below its underlying holdings on Wednesday -- the first discount since March 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The vanishing premium suggests that after billions poured into GBTC as investors sought exposure to Bitcoin’s dizzying rally, investors are looking for the exits as the climb stalls, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.“This is panic or profit-taking selling,” said Eric Balchunas, BI’s senior ETF analyst. “It’s almost like the price of GBTC is an amplified version of Bitcoin price.”Bitcoin surged to a record of over $58,000 last weekend, but has stumbled since. The cryptocurrency fell another 1.4% on Thursday, on pace for its worst weekly pullback in a year.Michael Sonnenshein, chief executive officer of Grayscale Investments, acknowledged the risk of GBTC’s premium disappearing while speaking in a panel for the Bloomberg Crypto Summit on Thursday.“It’s certainly a risk, no question about it, but ultimately price discovery in GBTC every day is driven entirely by market forces,” Sonnenshein said.(Updates with comments from Michael Sonnenshein of Grayscale in the sixth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Engine failures on commercial planes happen with some frequency. Modern jets are designed to fly safely for a while even after one engine quits.
What Happened: The largest crypto exchange in Southeast Asia, Philippines-based PDAX, experienced a technical failure that led to Bitcoin trading at $6,000 – an 88% discount to its current price. Following the incident, PDAX asked its customers to return their Bitcoins, threatening legal action, a local news outlet Bitpinas has reported. According to the exchange’s CEO, the system error was not due to a hack but a technical “glitch” caused by a massive surge in trading activity. Why It Matters: The initial outage is said to have taken place on February 18; however, since then, reports have surfaced on social media of customers being locked out of their exchange accounts and being asked to “return their Bitcoin.” “After almost 24 hours, they sent me a demand letter and SMS, requesting me to transfer back the BTC, or they “may” be compelled to take legal actions against me.” said one trader who believed his purchase was well within his rights without violating any laws or regulations of the trading platform. See also: How to Buy Bitcoin (BTC) Rafael Padilla, an attorney representing the affected users who are currently locked out of their accounts, commented on the issue on Facebook. “Our client’s trade transaction was legitimate under applicable laws, decided cases, and of course according to PDAX’s very own terms and conditions/user agreement.” According to Padilla, PDAX has opted to lock users out of their accounts because it cannot unilaterally reverse the transactions. An official statement from PDAX claims that 95% of accounts have been restored, but according to the report, many users are still locked out of their accounts. “It’s very understandable that a lot of users will feel upset they were able to buy what they thought an order was there for Bitcoin at very low prices. But unfortunately, the underlying Bitcoins were never in the possession of the exchange, so there’s never really anything there to be bought or sold, unfortunately.”, said PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba in a press conference earlier today. Image: vjkombajn via Pixabay See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaElon Musk's Tweet About Dogecoin Sends Price Up 10% In 30 Minutes AgainMicroStrategy Buys Additional .026B Worth Of Bitcoin, Surpasses Tesla's Bitcoin Holdings© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Nearly a quarter of surveyed investors state they plan to hold their investments for more than three years.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) founder Bill Gates is concerned about Bitcoin’s impact on climate change. What Happened: “Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind,” Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin in a live-streamed Clubhouse session on Wednesday. Researchers at Cambridge have found that by consuming over 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year, BTC electricity consumption is more than the whole of Argentina. In fact, some critics have argued that when an electric car company like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, it unwittingly may have undermined its environmental image. See also: How to Buy Bitcoin (BTC) Why It Matters: Gates went on to tell Sorkin that there was a more efficient way of doing digital currency that wouldn’t require such high usage of electricity. Gates seemed to hint that a digital currency might be in the works at his foundation. “There are other ways of doing digital currency that our foundation is involved with which are done in local currency,” he said. “The transactions are not secret, they’re reversible. You can’t use it for ransom or things like that, and yet the transaction fees are so low that it's empowering the poorest.” What Else: While the energy requirements to mine and produce Bitcoin are still considerably high, cryptocurrency analytics firm Arcane Research finds that Bitcoin contributes to only 2.3% of digital tech emissions. Bitcoin’s climate footprint of 37Mt CO2 is still minuscule compared to other digital industries. The total GHG emissions from digital tech are estimated to 1600Mt, with Bitcoin contributing to roughly 2.3% of the digital tech emissions. pic.twitter.com/n3hWiFfpxm — Arcane Research (@ArcaneResearch) February 16, 2021 Image: World Economic Forum via Wikicommons See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaCrypto Exchange Asks Customers To Return Bitcoin After Selling It At 88% DiscountElon Musk's Tweet About Dogecoin Sends Price Up 10% In 30 Minutes Again© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.