Business

(Reuters) -Pfizer Inc maintained sales forecasts for its COVID-19 products for the first time since launching its coronavirus vaccine, in a sign that the dizzying growth of the past few quarters has slowed.

The company said it expects $22 billion in sales of its COVID pill Paxlovid this year, compared with analysts’ average expectation of $26.1 billion.

Pfizer had previously said that its forecast for $22 billion in Paxlovid sales only represents a fraction of the 120 million courses the company is able to manufacture this year.

The company’s reluctance to lift the forecast could suggest that it did not sign significant new sales contracts for the pill during the first quarter.

In prepared remarks for the company’s conference call with investors, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said the company had seen a significant pickup in the drug’s use in the United States recently and said that some countries that have experienced recent outbreaks have asked for more treatment courses.

The drugmaker also reiterated its forecast of $32 billion in sales from the vaccine it developed with BioNTech. It has raised the forecast for the vaccine’s sales every quarter in 2021.

“Sales (of the vaccine) are expected to eventually slow as an increasing percentage of the global population receive a complete vaccination course,” said Millie Gray, analyst at Informa Pharma Intelligence.

At the request of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, several drug companies have adjusted their forecasts to include expenses from milestone payments and acquisitions.

The company said it now expects full-year adjusted profit of $6.25 to $6.45 per share, below its prior forecast of $6.35 to $6.55, mostly due to the impact of those expenses.

Pfizer’s shares fell nearly 1% to $47.94 in choppy premarket trading.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in New Jersey; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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NEW YORK (AP) — In a court appeal, a lawyer for Donald Trump said Monday it is “unconscionable and indefensible” for the ex-president to be held in contempt and fined $10,000 a day for failing to turn over documents he doesn’t possess.

Attorney Alina Habba made the argument in a submission to a New York state appeals court requesting that the contempt order and fine be suspended until the challenge can be heard by appeals judges.

The arguments were submitted a week after State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron in Manhattan said Trump and his lawyers had failed to show they conducted a proper search for records sought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, in a civil probe of his business dealings.

James had asked the court to hold Trump in contempt after he failed to produce any documents to satisfy a March 31 deadline to meet the terms of the subpoena. She has said her investigation has found evidence that Trump may have misstated the value of assets like skyscrapers and golf courses on financial statements for over a decade.

Trump, a Republican, has been fighting James in court over her investigation, which he has called a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

Habba told Engoron a week ago that she met with Trump to ensure he had no records and there were none to be found. On Friday, she submitted additional documents explaining the document search, including an affidavit in which Trump claimed he has no documents. Engoron criticized the affidavit as lacking in detail.

In Monday’s written arguments submitted to the appellate division of the state’s trial court, Habba wrote that the daily fine “is not only unwarranted, it is also patently improper and impermissible by law.”

She said Trump and his representatives had performed a “diligent, thorough and comprehensive search” for everything sought in the subpoena and provided complete and accurate responses to the attorney general. She said the additional submissions last week amounted to “extraordinary efforts to comply.”

“Given these circumstances, it is unconscionable and indefensible for Appellant to be held in contempt in any manner, must less at the inordinate expense of $10,000 per day,” she said.

The written submission Monday came after Habba notified the appeals court last week that she was appealing. Trump is also appealing Engoron’s Feb. 17 ruling requiring him to answer questions under oath. Oral arguments in that appeal are scheduled for May 11.

A message seeking comment from the attorney general’s office was not immediately returned.

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Associated Press Writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this story.

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By Maria Ponnezhath

(Reuters) – Netflix Inc said on Sunday it has decided to drop works on Meghan Markle’s animated family series “Pearl” as the streaming platform hew its animated content.

Netflix decided to stop developing several projects, including Meghan’s series as part of its strategic decisions on creating animated series, the company said in a statement, without providing further details on its decisions.

Archewell Productions, the company formed by Meghan and her husband Prince Harry, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, had announced last year that Meghan would be an executive producer of “Pearl”. The series was planned to be centered on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl, who is inspired by a variety of influential women from history.

Archewell Productions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Netflix also decided not to move forward with two animated kids’ series “Dino Daycare” and “Boons and Curses.”

The decision to cancel these shows came after Netflix reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter, falling well short of its forecast of adding 2.5 million subscribers.

However, Netflix confirmed that the company would continue to work on a number of projects with Archewell Productions, including previously announced documentary series “Heart of Invictus”. The series will focus on athletes competing in the Invictus Games for injured veterans in The Hague in 2022.

Netflix did not respond to a query on whether it will cut down more animated shows.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)

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(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s economy grew by 9.6% in the first quarter of 2022, compared to a year earlier, according to flash government estimates on Sunday, as a recovery in the oil sector drove the strongest growth in more than a decade.

During the first quarter, oil activity in Saudi Arabia increased by 20.4% and non-oil activity by 3.7%, the estimates showed.

If the estimates are confirmed, they would mark the highest growth rate since 2011, the Saudi General Authority for Statistics said.

(Reporting by Moataz Mohamed,; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

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By Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co’s head of corporate affairs, Geoff Morrell, is leaving the company three months after joining from oil and energy company BP Plc, according to an email on Friday from Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek.

Morrell’s brief tenure has been marked by controversy over the company’s response to Florida’s law barring classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity for some younger students.

“It has become clear to me that for a number of reasons it is not the right fit,” Morrell wrote in a separate email to his staff. “I have decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.”

Both emails were seen by Reuters.

Kristina Schake will lead the company’s communications efforts, Chapek said in the email. Her 30-plus years of experience include heading up President Joe Biden’s vaccine education program, as well as communications for Instagram and work in the Obama administration.

Government relations and global public policy will be led by Disney’s general counsel, Horacio Gutierrez.

Disney became the focus of criticism for initially failing to speak out publicly against the Florida legislation, which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The company said it worked behind the scenes to influence the legislation, an approach Chapek admitted had failed. He later voiced disappointment with the measure and apologized to the company’s LGBTQ employees for failing to be a “stronger ally in the fight for equal rights.”

When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill into law on March 28, Disney issued a statement saying it “should never have passed” and said that it should be repealed.

Disney’s public condemnation opened a new front in the nation’s culture wars, with DeSantis signing a bill on April 22 that would strip the company of its self-governing authority at its Orlando-area parks in apparent retaliation.

The company has yet to issue a statement on the new law, which would take effect on June 1, 2023.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)

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By Natalie Grover and Pushkala Aripaka

(Reuters) -AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine still has a role to play in the fight against the pandemic, even as sales slow and the company charges more in some places, CEO Pascal Soriot said on Friday, the latest drugmaker to warn about a global supply glut.

The comments come after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter profit and sales driven by the vaccine, its second bestseller last year raking in $3.9 billion. It also confirmed its forecast that 2022 sales of the shot would fall.

The vaccine, branded as Vaxzevria and Covishield, has struggled to compete with rivals made by Pfizer and Moderna using mRNA technology, and has hit setbacks with production, rare side-effects and relatively limited shelf life. Approval in the United States has been delayed.

Soriot said the shot, which was seen early in the pandemic as the inoculation of choice for low-income countries, should remain relevant because it’s easy to administer and distribute.

Volume will ease, though, because people will probably only need one booster.

“We are no longer in a period of scarcity of vaccine supply – we have oversupply everywhere around the world. So what is out there needs to be used and then of course we’ll be able to get a better sense for reordering,” he said on a media call.

Rival Johnson & Johnson this month pulled its sales forecast for its COVID-19 vaccine, blaming oversupply on hesitancy in developing countries.

So far, 2.9 billion shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been delivered globally.

In the first quarter, the company recorded $1.15 billion in sales for the product, the majority of which came from initial contracts, but that number eclipsed analysts’ consensus forecast of $739 million, cited by Credit Suisse.

AstraZeneca’s shares were down 0.6% in early afternoon trading, underperfoming London’s blue-chip index.

The company has started earning a modest profit on the vaccine, which was initially sold at-cost, but it will continue selling in low-income countries on a non-profit basis.

Apart from the vaccine, AstraZeneca also has a COVID-19 treatment, Evusheld, which has been authorised in many regions including the United States, United Kingdom and European Union for preventing infections in people whose immune system is too weak to respond to vaccines.

The drug generated $469 million in first-quarter revenue, below the consensus forecast of $480 million, cited by Credit Suisse.

Access to the drug in the United States has been limited by logistical bottlenecks that are being addressed, Soriot said, adding Britain was one of the few developed countries that has not ordered Evusheld.

“It’s a sad situation, quite frankly, because people who are immunocompromised are really suffering from the COVID crisis.”

CANCER

AstraZeneca – which unveiled plans to open an R&D centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts designed to serve as the new headquarters for rare disease unit Alexion, which it bought last summer – relies on cancer drugs for about a third of its total product sales.

Even though COVID-19 levels are beginning to wane, access to cancer diagnoses and treatment has still not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. Things should normalise over the next few months, Soriot predicted.

Meanwhile, the company pared back its expectations for China, which accounted for about 16% of total revenue last year.

The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker said it expected sales there to decline by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2022, largely due to the impact of a programme designed to bring down the prices of off-patent drugs in the country.

“The future for China, we believe is still very strong and we expect to return to growth in the next couple of years,” Soriot said, cautioning that lockdowns in China this year could hurt the uptake of cancer and other drugs.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Natalie Grover in LondonEditing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter)

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BEIJING (Reuters) -China signalled an easing of its crackdown on the once-freewheeling tech sector on Friday as President Xi Jinping seeks to bolster the economy in the face of growth-sapping COVID-19 lockdowns, sending shares in online heavyweights surging.

China’s powerful Politburo, in a meeting chaired by Xi, said it will step up policy support for the world’s second-largest economy, including its so-called “platform economy”, fueling investor hopes that the worst may be over for an unprecedented, multi-pronged crackdown that began in late 2020.

The optimism was also powered by reports that China’s top leaders will hold a symposium early next month with a number of internet companies, expected to be chaired by Xi, according to two people familiar with the matter. Food delivery giant Meituan was among those invited, one source said.

The sources declined to be named cited confidentiality constraints.

The South China Morning Post, which first reported on the upcoming meeting, said that tech giants Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and TikTok owner ByteDance were also invited, citing two sources.

Authorities are seeking to reassure the corporate executives about the current regulatory environment and encourage them to continue to develop their business, one source told Reuters.

Separately, sources said Chinese and U.S. regulators were discussing operational details of an audit deal that Beijing hopes to sign this year, the latest move to try to keep Chinese companies from being kicked off U.S. exchanges.

“The Chinese regulators have been trying to strike a balance between growth and regulation over the years,” said Ming Liao, founding partner of Beijing-based Prospect Avenue Capital, which manages $300 million in assets.

“For now, we might see the regulatory crackdown wrapping up as earlier policies take effect while the economy looks for growth,” he said, adding that investors are anxiously awaiting regulatory actions to reassure the investment outlook for China, particularly a clarified set of overseas listing rules.

Earlier on Friday, the Politburo, a top decision-making body of China’s ruling Communist Party, vowed to “complete the special rectification of the platform economy”, without giving a timeline, and roll out measures to support its development.

TOUGH TARGET

Beijing has set a growth target of 5.5% this year, which private economists have said will be difficult to reach without significant support, as COVID-19 lockdowns and other heavy curbs to battle the pandemic create havoc for businesses and supply chains.

During Friday’s meeting, the Politburo said it will support COVID-hit industries and small firms, accelerate infrastructure construction, and stabilize transport, logistics, and supply chains, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis in Hong Kong, said the Politburo meeting “is a positive sign that the government seeks to prioritise growth versus a lot of other goals such as deleveraging or other regulatory change in the short term.”

Ng said that anti-trust measures that have squeezed the platform economy as well as a clampdown on the property sector could ultimately return.

“But in the short run because of the pressure on growth and the zero covid policy, there will need to be a trade off between deleveraging and crackdowns versus growth, and that’s why the market is a bit more optimistic in the short term,” he said.

The Hang Seng Tech index rose 10% for its best day since Vice Premier Liu He promised policy support six weeks ago. E-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com rose 16%, as did Meituan, while Tencent rose 11%.

China’s benchmark share index jumped more than 2%.

Markets had been hit hard over the past two weeks by fears that lockdowns would cause severe damage to China’s economy and derail a global recovery just as many countries are rebounding from pandemic-led slumps.

(Reporting by Julie Zhu, Kevin Yao, Alun John, Xie Yu and the Beijing newsroomWriting by Tony Munroe; Editing by Carmel Crimmins)

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By Sabrina Valle and Shariq Khan

(Reuters) -Exxon Mobil Corp doubled its first-quarter per-share profit, it said on Friday, but the results fell short of Wall Street estimates, even excluding a $3.4 billion writedown from its withdrawal from Russia.

The top U.S. oil producer tripled its buyback program, saying it will repurchase up to $30 billion in shares by the end of next year.

Exxon reported net income of $5.48 billion, or $1.28 per share, in the three months ended March 31, compared with $2.73 billion, or 64 cents per share, last year.

The company’s adjusted earnings per share came to $2.07, short of the Refinitiv consensus for $2.12 a share, while revenue came in at $90.5 billion, below the $92.7 billion consensus.

The results included a $3.4 billion after-tax hit on the oil major’s Russia Sakhalin-1 operation, which it said it would exit on March 1, shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Exxon’s writedown follows others oil majors exiting Russia after the Ukraine invasion. BP PLC and Shell PLC have flagged up to $25 billion and $5 billion in writedowns from leaving their Russian businesses, respectively.

Exxon has been trying to boost output in its primary development areas, the U.S. Permian basin, and in Guyana, the tiny South American nation that has seen windfall oil discoveries in recent years and where Exxon has two major offshore developments.

Notably, the company’s refining division posted much weaker results from the previous quarter, with earnings of $332 million, compared with $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter. The company said the sharp rise in prices ended up costing $1.3 billion of “negative timing impacts,” including $760 million in mark-to-market effects on open derivatives positions.

The company said those losses will be unwound when it makes certain physical sales.

Exxon’s output of crude and other liquids including bitumen and synthetic oil was 2.3 million barrels per day, a 5% drop from the previous quarter. Natural gas production fell by 1.5%.

Exxon’s shares were down 1.1% to $86.25 in premarket trading.

(Reporting by Sabrina Valle in Houston and Shariq Khan in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur; editing by David Evans and Chizu Nomiyama)

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By Leika Kihara

TOKYO (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan on Thursday strengthened its commitment to keep interest rates ultra-low by vowing to buy unlimited amounts of bonds daily to defend its yield target, triggering a fresh sell-off in the yen and sending government bonds rallying.

Reinforcing its resolve to support a fragile economy even as sharp rises in raw material costs push up inflation, the BOJ maintained its ultra-loose monetary policy and a pledge to keep interest rates at “present or lower levels.”

It also said it would buy unlimited amounts of 10-year government bonds to defend an implicit 0.25% cap around its zero yield target every market day, instead of on an ad-hoc basis.

The BOJ’s commitment to its zero-rate programme puts it at odds with other major economies that are shifting toward tighter monetary policy to combat surging prices, although inflation in Japan is expected to creep up towards the central bank’s 2% target.

“The key announcement is the commitment to conducting fixed-rate operations every day,” said Bart Wakabayashi, co-branch manager at State Street Bank in Tokyo.

“I think they are trying to make the point here that we’re ready to act at any second. They’ve quadrupled down on their commitment to this.”

The BOJ’s strengthened commitment to keep policy accommodative drove the yen well below the psychological threshold of 130 to the dollar for the first time since 2002.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bonds slipped to a more than three-week low of 0.215%.

“We want to prevent Japan’s long-term interest rates from rising in line with overseas bond yield increases,” BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda told a news conference after the policy decision.

Kuroda said there was no change to his view that a weak yen benefits Japan’s economy, a sign further falls in the currency likely won’t prompt the BOJ to tweak its ultra-easy policy.

But he warned that excess market volatility could hurt the economy by making it difficult for firms to set business plans.

An official of Japan’s finance ministry, which decides whether to conduct currency intervention, told reporters Tokyo will take “appropriate” action as needed and warned that recent sharp yen moves were “extremely worrying”.

As widely expected, the BOJ left unchanged its -0.1% target for short-term interest rates and a pledge to guide the 10-year bond yield around 0%.

RISING INFLATIONARY PRESSURE

In fresh quarterly forecasts, the central bank projected core consumer inflation to hit 1.9% in the current fiscal year before moderating to 1.1% in fiscal 2023 and 2024 – a sign it sees current cost-push price rises as transitory.

In a nod to rising inflationary pressure, however, the BOJ said wage and price increases were expected to broaden as the economy continues to recover.

“The rise in underlying inflation is likely to further push up medium- and long-term inflation expectations,” the central bank said in its quarterly outlook report.

But Kuroda said he did not expect conditions to fall in place for the BOJ to seek an exit from its loose policy in the foreseeable future.

BOJ officials see developments in long-term price expectations as crucial to judging whether inflation becomes embedded and warrants withdrawing monetary stimulus.

Core consumer inflation, which hit 0.8% in March, is set to accelerate to around 2% from April, though the rise will be driven largely by rising fuel costs and the dissipating effect of past cellphone fee cuts – rather than from higher wages, or underlying demand.

Some analysts say the markets could challenge the BOJ’s easy policy commitment.

“There’s no sign at all that prices are stably going to rise to 2% so everyone is wondering whether it’s really good to keep going as it is,” said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute in Tokyo.

“Markets could attack (the BOJ’s unlimited bond buying),” he said.

(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Daniel Leussink and Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill)

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(Reuters) -PayPal Holdings Inc shares traded higher Wednesday even after the company lowered its full-year profit outlook, signaling that payments volumes could take a hit from surging inflation and the conflict in Ukraine.

Still, the company reported a modest increase in revenue and user growth, appearing to quell some investor fears. Its shares traded 5% higher after the market closed.

The company said it expects adjusted profit between $3.81 and $3.93 on a per share basis, down from its previous forecast of $4.60 to $4.75.

In a conference call with analysts, Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman said the company was withdrawing its medium-term outlook as both e-commerce penetration and macroeconomic conditions presented challenges.

He also acknowledged that “our shareholders expect more from us than our track record over the past several quarters.”

Schulman said 2022 remains another challenging year to forecast, adding “forecasting normalized consumer ecommerce spending as we come out of the pandemic is exceedingly complex.”

Customers in the United States have started tightening their belts in recent months as inflation surges to its highest in decades, pressuring earnings of payment processors like PayPal.

The company is also expected to take a financial hit from its decision to join the Western corporate boycott of Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow has called a “special operation.”

PayPal had hit 52-week lows this week before reporting its earnings for the first quarter of 2022 as the market braced for a grim readout.

In the first three months of the year, PayPal’s revenue rose 8% on an FX neutral basis to $6.5 billion, above Wall Street estimates of $6.4 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

The company processed a total of $323 billion in payments in the first quarter, up 15% from a year earlier. Venmo – PayPal’s app that allows U.S. individuals to send and receive money, posted a 12% jump in payments processed to $57.8 billion.

PayPal closed the first quarter with 429 million active accounts, up 9% from the previous quarter, mostly driven by Venmo users.

PayPal earned a profit of 88 cents per share on an adjusted basis, which was in line with analysts’ expectations.

The company said it expected an adjusted profit of 86 cents per share in the current quarter, below analysts’ estimates of $1.12 per share.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Aditya Soni, Bernard Orr)

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