Hey Snackers,
The UK's Top Diplocat is retiring. Palmerston, the eminent Chief Mouser at the British Foreign Office, has decided to leave the London diplomatic scene behind and retire to the countryside. His accomplishments are almost as numerous as the cat puns we spared you from.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq was dragged down by stock dips in Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Despite uncertainty around the 2nd coronavirus stimulus package, the S&P 500 index is close to its pre-lockdown highs.
Q2 hits right... Canopy Growth, Earth's most valuable cannabis company, just hit investors with stronger-than-expected earnings. Somehow Canopy's sales were 22% higher than the same quarter last year despite recreational weed sales in Canada falling overall. Canopy stock popped 8% on the news. To smoke the wider market, the Canadian cannabis giant focused beyond the leaf:
To put it bluntly... Canopy slashed spending. It sadly cut over 18% of its employees since December and shut some of its cannabis-growing greenhouses. That left it more $$$ to invest in the above mentioned growth initiatives. Canopy was also able to significantly narrow its quarterly loss from $194M to $128M.
"Beyond the leaf" is key... The late 2018 "weed bubble" has popped. Consumer demand for legalized weed in Canada didn't meet hyped expectations, and cannabis companies found they'd over-produced. Now...
Restock the Terra chips... Airlines are (kind of) back. Airline stocks surged on some high-flying TSA data: on Sunday, the number of people passing through US airport checkpoints was the highest since pre-lockdowns. Delta and American shares surged over 7%, United soared 9%, and Southwest got a 5% bump.
It trends well, but does it end well?... Investors like how passenger numbers are trending, and this latest milestone has made hopes take off. But much of this surge is likely a result of the summer travel rush.
That October deadline is fast approaching... Even as passenger numbers improve, airline sales don't come close to breaking even with spending. Cash-strapped airlines have warned tens of thousands of employees that they might lose their jobs. Labor unions and airline execs have been pushing for $25 billion in extra aid to preserve jobs through March 2021. President Trump and over a dozen senators have backed them. But unless air travel dramatically picks up soon, even that might not be enough to tide over airlines.
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Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Apple