TM - Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: CVS Pulls Phenylephrine Amid Legal Woes

2023-10-20 06:34:58 ET

Summary

• CVS pulls oral medications containing decongestant phenylephrine due to lawsuits and doubts about its effectiveness.
• Toyota agrees to adopt Tesla's charging standard for its battery electric vehicles in North America.
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals explores strategic options, including a potential sale, and considers separating its cannabinoid business from its oncology operations.

Listen below or on the go on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Drug retailers, makers face mounting litigation over decongestant products. (00:25) Toyota (TM) works out deal with Tesla ( TSLA ) to adopt NACS charging standard. (02:27) Jazz Pharmaceuticals ( JAZZ ) exploring strategic options , including sale - Bloomberg. (03:15)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

CVS has decided to pull oral medications that contain the decongestant phenylephrine.

This comes as it and several other leading OTC drugmakers and retailers face a growing number of lawsuits related to the drug’s effectiveness.

Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that CVS was removing products from its shelves that had phenylephrine as the sole active ingredient. The move comes about a month after an FDA advisory panel agreed that the phenylephrine, which has been on the market for years, didn’t really work when it was taken by mouth.

While the FDA is not bound to the recommendations of its panels, it generally follows them. The agency has not yet issued a formal decision on whether to allow pills and syrups containing the popular decongestant to remain on the market. Nasal sprays containing phenylephrine do not appear to be an issue.

Meanwhile, a growing number of lawsuits have been filed against drugmakers who made the products and the retailers who sold them.

Last week, a law firm in Illinois filed a class action suit specifically aimed at CVS, alleging that the company misled consumers by manufacturing and marketing a product they should’ve known didn’t work based on past debates about the drug’s effectiveness. The firm has filed similar suits against Kenvue’s parent, Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ ), and Pfizer ( PFE ).

Last month, two consumers in California filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Sacramento against makers and retailers of phenylephrine medications. The plaintiffs, are asking the court to certify their case as a class-action suit, and seeking compensation for consumers in California and throughout the US, according to The Mercury News.

Fourteen defendants were named in the California suit, including CVS (NYSE: CVS ), Walgreens Boots Alliance ( WBA ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Walmart ( WMT ), Target ( TGT ) and Procter & Gamble ( PG ).

The California suit joined a class action suit filed last month in a federal court in New Jersey that named Kenvue ( KVUE ), Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK ) and Walgreens among the defendants.

Toyota Motor (NYSE: TM ) is the latest automaker to announce that it will adopt Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA ) charging standard in North America.

Toyota North America reached an agreement with Tesla ( TSLA ) to adopt the North American Charging Standard on its battery electric vehicles beginning in 2025.

Both Toyota and Lexus customers will have access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across North America at that time.

In addition, customers owning or leasing Toyota and Lexus vehicles equipped with the Combined Charging System will be offered access to an adapter to enable NACS charging starting in 2025.

The positive news for Tesla ( TSLA ) came on a tough day for shares. The EV stock finished the day with a drop of 9.3%.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc (NASDAQ: JAZZ ) is studying strategic options, including a potential sale.

According to a Bloomberg report late Thursday, which cited people familiar with the matter, the pharmaceutical company is talking with advisers to see if there's interest.

Jazz ( JAZZ ) is also looking at options that may include a breakup or the sale of parts of its business.

According to the report, the company is looking into the possibility of separating its cannabinoid business from its oncology operations.

Jazz could see interest from large drugmakers that want to grow in neuroscience and oncology.

Jazz Pharma has a market cap of $8.4 billion.

The company declined to comment to Bloomberg.

Premarket JAZZ is up 2.2%

Other articles to look out for on Seeking Alpha:

China to restrict exports of key EV battery material graphite

Microsoft paid top boss Nadella $48.5M in fiscal 2023

Starbucks sues Workers United union over damaging social media post

Market investors aren’t as worried about the state of the world as they should be - Paul Singer

On our catalyst watch for the day:

• The healthcare sector will see one of its bigger conferences of the year begin this weekend in Madrid. ESMO Congress is an annual oncology meeting that has led to share price jolts for participating companies in the past. The conference is from October 20th to 24th.

• Amazon's ( AMZN ) Twitch property will hold its TwitchCon event in Las Vegas.

U.S. stocks on Thursday ended lower, as markets were rattled by comments issued by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell at an event. Traders also waded through a slew of earnings results and economic data.

The Nasdaq ( COMP.IND ) declined 0.96%. The S&P 500 ( SP500 ) retreated 0.85%, while the Dow ( DJI ) slipped 0.75%.

Ten of the 11 S&P sectors closed in negative territory. Communication Services was the exception, which was buoyed by the surge in Netflix ( NFLX ) as well as an advance in AT&T ( T ).

Fed chief Powell, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, acknowledged in prepared remarks that lower inflation readings over the summer was a "very favorable development," while also reiterating that inflation was still too high. Furthermore, in the question-answer session, Powell said that there was evidence that monetary policy was not "too tight" right now.

Shorter-end Treasury yields fell after his comments. The 10-year Treasury yield ( US10Y ) hit 5% at its session high. It had last hit that level on July 20, 2007. The 2-year yield ( US2Y ) was down 6 basis points to 5.16%.

Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the red. The Dow is down 0.2%, the S&P 500 is down 0.3% and the Nasdaq is down 0.3%. Crude oil is up 1.1% at more than $89 a barrel.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is down 0.7% and the DAX is down 1.1%.

The biggest movers for the day premarket: SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ: SEDG ) is down 24% after cutting its Q3 revenue outlook due to unexpected cancellations and pushouts of backlog from European distributors.

On today’s economic calendar,

• 9am Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker will speak on the economic outlook before the Risk Management Association Philadelphia Chapter Meeting.

For further details see: