David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Autonomies

    Boeing Sees 737 Max Approval Slipping to Mid-2020 in New Delay

    This article by Alan Levin and Julie Johnsson for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Boeing Co. is telling 737 Max customers that the grounded jet won’t be approved to fly until June or July, months later than previously anticipated, said people familiar with the matter.

    The new delay comes after two recent discoveries, a software flaw that will require more work than expected and an audit that found that some wiring on the plane needs to be rerouted. The timetable also includes a buffer for unanticipated complications, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

    The new expectations mean that Boeing’s best-selling jet would miss the busy summer travel season for the second straight year, adding to the compensation that the U.S. planemaker is likely to pay airlines. The Max was grounded in March 2019 after two deadly crashes that killed 346 people.

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    DoubleLine Round Table Prima 1-6-20 - Segment 2: Markets

    This video which is the second in the three-part series highlights some of the differences between economists’ perspective on growth and the forward-looking perspective offered by the stock market. I commend it to subscribers.

    Boeing Lost Its Way by Going on a Wall Street Detour

    This article by Joe Nocera for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    By the time Boeing decided to cobble together the 737 Max, its engineering culture was completely broken. Here’s how Aboulafia described it to Useem in the Atlantic:

    It was the ability to comfortably interact with an engineer who in turn feels comfortable telling you their reservations, versus calling a manager [more than] 1,500 miles away who you know has a reputation for wanting to take your pension away. It’s a very different dynamic. As a recipe for disempowering engineers in particular, you couldn’t come up with a better format.

    You can see that disempowerment — and its consequences — in the recently released emails. Instead of bringing their fears and complaints to superiors, the engineers grouse to themselves about the problems they see with the plane. They are bitter about management’s unwillingness to slow things down, to build the plane properly, to take the care that’s required to prevent tragedy from striking.

    There is one email in particular from an unidentified Boeing engineer that I can’t get out of my head. It was written in June 2018, about a year after the company had begun shipping the 737 Max to customers:

    Everyone has it in their head that meeting schedule is most important because that’s what Leadership pressures and messages. All the messages are about meeting schedule, not delivering
    quality…

    We put ourselves in this position by picking the lowest cost supplier and signing up to impossible schedules. Why did the lowest ranking and most unproven supplier receive the contract? Solely based on bottom dollar…. Supplier management drives all these decisions — yet we can’t even keep one person doing the same job in SM for more than 6 months to a year. They don’t know this business and those that do don’t have the appropriate level of input… .

    I don’t know how to fix these things … it’s systemic. It’s culture. It’s the fact that we have a senior leadership team that understand very little about the business and yet are driving us to certain objectives. It’s lots of individual groups that aren’t working closely and being accountable …. Sometimes
    you have to let things fail big so that everyone can identify a problem … maybe that’s what needs to happen instead of continuing to just scrape by.

    Of course that’s exactly what happened: the 737 Max failed big — at a cost of 346 lives. Shareholder value has caused much harm in the three decades since it became the core value of American capitalism: diabetics who can’t afford insulin; students ripped off by for-profit universities; patients gouged by hospital chains; and so much else. But none worse than this.
     

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    Saut Strategy Soooooooooooooooooo?!

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Jeffrey Saut which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Boeing Capsule Misses Space Station Rendezvous as Crisis Deepens

     This article by Justin Bachman may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

     

    The mishap jeopardizes U.S. plans for human flights as soon as next year by Boeing, which was hired to ferry astronauts to the ISS as part of NASA‘s commercial crew program along with Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Boeing’s failure also deepens the sense of crisis around the aerospace giant as it tries to persuade regulators to end a flying ban on its 737 Max after two deadly crashes.

    Boeing fell 1% to $330.04 at 10:40 a.m. in New York. The stock rose 3.4% this year through Thursday while the S&P 500 advanced 28%. NASA and Boeing officials said they were still trying to understand the cause of the timer failure. It’s too soon to assess the impact on subsequent Boeing space flights, they said. About 50 minutes after liftoff, the Starliner was out of position to begin its orbital insertion burn, the last boost into an orbit so the vehicle could dock at the space station. Had astronauts been on board, they might have been able to correct the problem, Bridenstine said.

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    FedEx Slides on Profit Outlook, Pressuring Dow Transports

    This note by Nancy Moran and Thomas Black for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers.

    FedEx Corp. erased its gains for the year after cutting its profit forecast for the second straight quarter as e-commerce puts a squeeze on margins. The stock also weighed on the Dow Jones Transportation Average, where it held the third-biggest weighting prior to Wednesday. FedEx was already reeling this week after Amazon.com Inc. stoked competitive tensions by banning third-party sellers from using the courier’s services, citing poor service.

     

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    Crispr Surges as Gene Editing Shows Promise in Blood Disease

    This article by Bailey Lipschultz and Michelle Fay Cortez for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “While the data are early, we are quite excited about what we are seeing,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is a pretty significant milestone, not just for us as a company but for the entire field. This could be an important landmark in medicine, when we saw the first promise for providing cures for a number of diseases using a gene editing approach.”

    The early findings may benefit rival companies also studying medicines based on Crispr technology, as they are the first results from publicly traded companies using the platform. Editas Medicine Inc.’s lead drug will be given to its first patient at the start of next year as a treatment for a form of blindness, while Intellia Therapeutics Inc. is on track to file for its first human trial by mid-year.

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    Luckin Coffee's Stock Shoots Up After Revenue Rises Above Expectations

    This article from Marketwatch may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Shares of Luckin Coffee Inc. (LK) shot up 7.6% in premarket trading Wednesday, after the China-based coffee seller reported wider third-quarter loss but revenue that rose above expectations. The net loss was RMB531.9 million ($74.4 million), or RMB3.60 per American Depository Share, after a loss of RMB484.9 million, or RMB2.24 per ADS a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, the adjusted per-ADS loss was RMB2.08, compared with the FactSet consensus for loss per ADS was RMB2.75. Revenue rose to RMB1.54 billion ($219.6 million) from RMB240.8 million, to beat expectations of RMB1.47 billion. Average monthly items sold were 44.2 million, up from 7.8 million a year ago, while the average monthly transacting customers grew to 9.3 million from 1.9 million. "During the third quarter, sales from freshly-brewed coffee drinks continued to maintain very strong growth, and we believe we will reach our goal to become the largest coffee player in China by the end of this year," said Chief Executive Jenny Qian. The stock. which went public on May 17, has tumbled 22.7% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has gained 5.7%.

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    Google Deepens Push for Financial Data With Citigroup Tie-Up

    This article by Jenny Surane for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “We’re exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the U.S. to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools,” Google said in an emailed statement, adding that the accounts will carry federally guaranteed insurance.

    The move is the latest sign of Silicon Valley’s determination to muscle in on financial firms’ territory, looking to expand their hold on customers and accumulate data on their finances. At the same time, it shows banks are more willing to pair up with technology companies in their quest to avoid getting shut out of the relationship entirely. In the Google arrangement, the financial institutions will handle most of the compliance requirements.

    Google has spent years building out its payments capabilities, offering consumers the ability to send money to friends and check out both online and in stores through Google Pay. With the checking accounts, consumers will be able to receive their paychecks and transact solely inside the Google ecosystem.

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    Electric cars are changing the cost of driving

    This article by Michael J. Coren for Quartz may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    It’s difficult to know how representative this data is of Teslas overall, given that Tesloop’s fleet is small, but it likely includes a large share of the highest-mileage Teslas on the road—several are nearing 500,000 miles. Finding conventional vehicles to compare is virtually impossible since most fleet cars are typically sold off after 100,000 miles.

    But the implications could be huge. Every year, corporations and rental car companies add more than 12 million vehicles in Europe and North America to their fleets (pdf). Adding EVs to the mix could see those cars lasting five times longer—costing a fraction of conventional cars over the same period—while feeding a massive new stream of used electric cars into the marketplace. Whether the future of fleets is really electric, however, depends on the data. And that’s still in short supply.  

    The promise of EVs
    Most commercial vehicle fleets still run on gasoline and diesel, David Hayward, a fleet expert with Deloitte consulting, said. But EVs are top of mind. “Everyone is excited about it and everyone wants it,” he told Quartz. “But there’s trepidation.” The potential savings are huge. Fleet owners’ biggest expenses after depreciation (44%) are fuel (22%) and maintenance and repairs (11%), according to Deloitte.  EVs could slash those by more than half.

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