Raphael Stevens

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday he believes investors should stay clear of online sports betting stocks.
“Until we see fewer promotional deals and more M&A deals, these online sports gambling stocks … are very difficult to own,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday he believes investors should stay clear of online sports betting stocks, contending it’s unattractive to own companies such as DraftKings because there’s too much competition in the gaming industry.
“Until we see fewer promotional deals and more M&A deals, these online sports gambling stocks … are very difficult to own,” the “Mad Money” host said, noting that this view stands in stark contrast to some of the optimism surrounding the burgeoning cohort in early 2021.

“But as we see what the reality looks like, there’s tons of competition for market share and little in the way of profits. Too bad, because profits are what this market wants right now. That’s why every single one of these stocks has been obliterated,” Cramer said, referring to the likes of Penn National Gaming, DraftKings and FanDuel-parent Flutter Entertainment.
Other players in the space include Caesars Entertainment, which operates an online sportsbook, and Rush Street Interactive.
Cramer’s comments Monday come in response to a major milestone Saturday, when mobile sports betting officially became legal in New York, the most-populous U.S. state in which that’s occurred. The first four waging operators to meet regulatory requirements and begin accepting bets were DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, Rush Street Interactive and FanDuel.
An additional five operators are still in the process of meeting all the legal requirements, the Associated Press reported. Cramer said that’s something investors need to consider when examining the impact of New York’s high-profile launch.
“These online gambling companies are throwing money at people in order to win market share,” Cramer said, referring to the advertising and promotional blitz that’s happening in New York. “If the industry’s already this competitive with four players, imagine the deals you’ll get when there are nine.”

Another factor to consider is New York’s “astronomical” 51% tax rate on revenue to which the the online sportsbook operators will be subject, Cramer said.
“Before you can think about buying the sports gambling stocks, I think we do need to see consolidation. We need to see some companies taken out,” he said.
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Scientists at Pfizer and Moderna are using the mRNA technology that helped Covid-19 vaccines succeed in exploring ways to inoculate the masses from the flu.
Existing flu vaccines are only 40% to 60% effective in preventing infection, and sometimes by a flu season’s end only 10% effective.
From 2010 to 2020, the CDC estimates that the flu caused between 12,000 and 52,000 deaths in the U.S. annually, from among nine million to 41 million infections.

Employees in special suits test the procedures for the manufacturing of the messenger RNA (mRNA) for the Covid-19 vaccine in German company BioNTech, in Marburg, Germany on March 29, 2021.
Abdulhamid Hosbas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The research and development that led to the Covid-19 vaccines have boosted efforts to find a more powerful, longer-lasting flu vaccine, perhaps taking steps towards virologists’ holy grail: a one-time, universal flu jab.
Scientists at Pfizer and Moderna, the pharmaceutical companies that harnessed a half-century of research into mRNA technology to create Covid vaccines, are using that same know-how in exploring ways to inoculate the masses from the flu.

“As demonstrated through the COVID-19 vaccine, mRNA vaccines offer…the potential to manufacture higher potency flu vaccines more rapidly than contemporary flu vaccines,” Pirada Suphaphiphat, vice president of viral vaccine research at New York City-based Pfizer, told CNBC by email. “The pandemic allowed us to deliver on the immense scientific opportunity of mRNA.”
In 2020, the number of flu cases was down precipitously, mostly likely due to Covid restrictions. But as this winter sets in, influenza infections and hospitalizations continue to rise, especially in eastern and central states, according to the weekly Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fluview report.

The CDC always recommends the annual flu vaccine as the best way to protect against contracting the virus and its potentially serious complications. There have been signs, however, that flu vaccination rates are lower this season compared to last, which may be attributable to the vaccine hesitancy that has erupted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Although one flu virus usually dominates each year in North America — the A(H3N2) this season — quadrivalent jabs are designed to protect against three other strains that may cause infections as the virus mutates from month to month.
This shotgun approach acknowledges the fact that flu vaccines are only 40% to 60% effective in preventing infection, and sometimes by a flu season’s end only 10% effective. Conventional flu vaccines are grown in either chicken eggs or mammalian cells and also takes about six months to produce the millions of doses needed.

Conversely, mRNA-based influenza vaccine design requires only the genetic sequence of the dominant virus, which significantly accelerates production time. The flexibility of mRNA technology and its rapid manufacturing time, Pfizer reports, could potentially allow better strain match, greater reliability of supply, and the potential opportunity to improve upon the efficacy of current flu vaccines.
 “We think mRNA is the ideal technology to take on this challenge,” Suphaphiphat adds.

The spread of mRNA technology

The technology behind messenger RNA, or mRNA, has been in development since it was discovered in 1960, but the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines marked the first time it had been approved for use in humans.

It’s now being applied to the development of several different vaccines. Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech said earlier this month that they will develop a potential mRNA-based vaccine for the prevention of shingles, while scientists have said they are hopeful the technology could be a turning point in the development of a HIV vaccine.
“mRNA is a platform,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said of broader vaccine ambitions on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday. “mRNA is an information molecule and so we have now forty-four zero programs that are in development and actually many more in the labs.”
With a focus on respiratory disease, Bancel said there are around 10 viruses that lead to hospitalizations every year.
“Flu, of course, is very well known but RSV, and many other viruses that are not very well known to the public because the symptoms are similar to flu where we believe the world deserves the single annual booster that contains all those different vaccines in a single dose against flu, against RSV, against Covid with the right adaptation to the strains circulating that’s here, and that’s what we’re working towards,” he said.
Moderna has a RSV program and a flu program in trials and “we’re working very quickly to combine this,” Bancel said.
“The way I think about it, it’s a bit like you’ll get an annual upgrade of a product by adding more vaccine in the same vial. So, you’ll get an adaptation for the current strains of that year in your geography, so in the U.S., or in Europe, or in Japan because as we see a lot of winters, the flu vaccine are perceived not to work because we are actually different strains circulating around the world.”
In September, Pfizer announced the beginning of a phase 1 human trial of an mRNA flu vaccine for adults, marking the drug maker’s first mRNA-based flu program. It is a so-called quadrivalent vaccine, like those administered to the public today, targeting four different flu variants.
In December, Moderna announced the first positive interim data from a phase 1 study of its quadrivalent seasonal flu vaccine candidate, called mRNA-1010, in older and younger adults. The company also announced that the phase 2 study of mRNA-1010 is now fully enrolled, and preparation for the phase 3 study is underway.
While generally encouraging, the findings nonetheless showed that Moderna’s mRNA-based flu vaccine was no more efficacious in older adults than already-approved shots on the market, in particular Sanofi’s Fluzone HD. After Moderna’s investor presentation of the findings, its shares dropped 10%. “We can’t make a direct comparison. We presented (Fluzone data) only as guidance,” a company executive said on a conference call with investors and urging them to wait for further data before selling off shares.
Typically, Big Pharma companies such as Pfizer and Moderna shy away from early-stage R&D on flu vaccines, because historically they generate modest revenues. The global influenza vaccine market was estimated at $6.59 billion in 2021 by Fortune Business Insights and is projected to grow to $10.73 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 7.2% during that forecast period. Worldwide revenues for the entire pharmaceutical industry were $1.27 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.
However, covid vaccines are another story altogether.
In November, while reporting its third-quarter earnings, Pfizer said it expects its coronavirus vaccine to bring in $36 billion in revenue in 2021. Around the same time, Moderna lowered its 2021 Covid vaccine earnings projections to between $15 billion and $18 billion, down from an earlier estimate of $20 billion, partly due to production problems.
With Covid-related deaths in the U.S. at more than 832,000 and more than 5.4 million worldwide, the public has taken its eye off the seasonal flu, which runs from October to May. Yet it has its own deadly history, with four flu pandemics occurring in the past century (1918, 1957, 1968, 2009), taking at least a million lives during each.
From 2010 to 2020, the CDC estimates that the flu caused between 12,000 and 52,000 deaths in the U.S. annually, from among nine million to 41 million infections. Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people every year.

Increasing research and development spend

Despite those horrific statistics, R&D toward improved flu vaccines, as well as funding, has been relatively paltry and largely confined to academia, biotech startups, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) unit has an annual budget of about $220 million for the universal flu vaccine, a chunk of it dispersed as grants to the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers, or CIVICs, launched in 2019. By comparison, the NIH earmarked nearly $7 billion for researching cancer, which claimed 606,520 lives in 2020.
Last November, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey reintroduced the Flu Vaccine Act, a bill proposing an investment of $1 billion for the NIH’s flu research projects, including external collaborations.
There are dozens of other flu vaccine R&D projects underway in the U.S., some in search of what are known as supra-seasonal shots that could prevent recipients from becoming infected for several years. A promising program is underway at the University of Washington’s Medicine Institute for Protein Design in Seattle by a team led by Neil King, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the university’s School of Medicine, using computers to design new, self-assembling protein nanoparticles to produce a vaccine.
“The vaccine is in a small phase 1 trial at the NIH,” King said. “Volunteers have been dosed and we’re starting analysis.” He anticipates having results in a couple of months, and following phase 2 and 3 trials, receiving FDA approval “within the next five years.”
NIAID is involved in several universal flu vaccine phase 1 trials, said Dr. Jennifer Gordon, program officer, influenza vaccine development. One launched in 2019 and another last June, each employing different scientific approaches.
Without pinpointing a timeframe, Dr. Gordon is hopeful that a truly one-time flu vaccine will someday become a reality but doesn’t overlook creating better ones in the meantime. “We don’t want to say we only care about vaccines that last forever,” she said. “There are approaches that are significant improvements over what we now have and are huge wins, even if not they’re not universal.” 
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Monday that its recent research collaborations will enable it to target the flu, specifically, through DNA technology that allows it to reduce the time it takes to produce an essential part of the overall manufacturing process for RNA vaccines from almost a month to a couple of days.
“That could cut dramatically, potentially even further our ability to have new variant vaccines if needed, instead of three months into two. That will produce let’s say dramatic benefits for, for our fighting against Covid and other diseases like flu, for example, because that will allow you to be very, very close the time that the new variants are circulated,” Bourla said.

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“The two doses, they’re not enough for omicron,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said.
Bourla said the two-dose vaccine does not provide robust protection against infection and its ability to prevent hospitalization has also declined. 
Bourla said third shots are providing good protection against death, and “decent” protection against hospitalization.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla talks during a press conference with European Commission President after a visit to oversee the production of the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at the factory of US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, in Puurs, on April 23, 2021.
John Thys | AFP | Getty Images

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Monday said two doses of the company’s vaccine may not provide strong protection against infection from the omicron Covid variant, and the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization.
Bourla, in an interview at J.P. Morgan’s healthcare conference, emphasized the importance of a third shot to boost people’s protection against omicron.

“The two doses, they’re not enough for omicron,” Bourla said. “The third dose of the current vaccine is providing quite good protection against deaths, and decent protection against hospitalizations.”
Bourla said omicron is a more difficult target than previous variants. Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer’s original two shots.

“We have seen with a second dose very clearly that the first thing that we lost was the protection against infections,” Bourla said. “But then two months later, what used to be very strong in hospitalization also went down. And I think this is what everybody’s worried about.”
Real-world data from the United Kingdom has found that two vaccine doses are 52% effective at preventing hospitalization 25 weeks after receiving the second shot, according to data from the U.K. Health Security Agency.

CNBC Health & Science

Two-doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing infection from omicron 20 weeks after the second dose, according to the U.K. data.

A booster dose, on the other hand, is up to 75% effective at preventing symptomatic infection and 88% effective at preventing hospitalization, according to the data.
However, Bourla said it’s unclear how long a booster dose will provide protection against Covid. The U.K. Health Security Agency also found that boosters are only 40% to 50% effective against infection 10 weeks after receiving the shot.
“The question mark, it is how long that protection lasts with the third dose,” Bourla said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending that some people with compromised immune systems receive four shots, three primary doses and one booster. Israel has rolled out fourth Pfizer doses for people over the age of 60. Israel found that fourth doses increase protective antibodies fivefold.
Bourla told CNBC earlier Monday that Pfizer will have a vaccine that specifically targets omicron ready in March, though he said it’s not clear whether it will be needed or not.
Bourla also told CNBC more tests need to be done to determine whether or not fourth doses are necessary.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said his charitable trust felt compelled to make purchases during Monday’s session after it began so negatively.
“When an important index like the Nasdaq trades at a three-month low, you have to at least buy something that’s being thrown out because they can’t all be that terrible,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said his charitable trust felt compelled to make purchases during Monday’s session after it began so negatively, especially in large-cap technology stocks.
While the Nasdaq Composite was able to shake off losses of more than 2% to close slightly higher Monday, Cramer said the investment trust saw opportunities to take advantage of the early weakness and acted for multiple reasons.

“When an important index like the Nasdaq trades at a three-month low, you have to at least buy something that’s being thrown out because they can’t all be that terrible,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Cramer’s charitable trust added to its positions in three stocks: Health-care firm Danaher and semiconductor companies Advanced Micro Devices and Marvell Technology.
“We know that many people like to buy a rising market because they have fear of missing out. They’re trying to sell high and buy higher, but sometimes they simply buy high and get crushed,” Cramer said. “The thing is, if you buy now, you’re buying low — or at least, much lower than where we were a few weeks ago. That’s how you can avoid kicking yourself for buying stocks near the peak.”
Another reason Cramer said he had confidence to buy in Monday’s session was Take-Two Interactive’s announcement that it planned to acquire Zynga, a mobile gaming company behind the FarmVille series.
“Some very smart businesses are actually taking action here, which tells me that the lower prices are creating real bargains for other companies,” said Cramer, who added that he was also encouraged that bond yields moved off their session highs throughout the afternoon.

To be sure, Cramer said he still sees aspects of the market that “disturb” him, namely the strength in bank stocks ahead of their quarterly reports in the coming days. Continued selling in financial technology stocks is also worrisome, he said.
“Now, the pattern in this part of the market is to rally off the lows and then open higher the next day, perhaps massively higher [if bond yields keep falling] before coming in a bit between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.,” Cramer said. “That’s what makes things so hard. If it opens up tomorrow, it’s very difficult to figure out what to do. It’s another reason why I keep stressing that you need to do your buying into the weakness of ugly days like today.”
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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

Veru: “Veru is in [Phase 3] for a very important breast cancer indication. They just got fast-track designation by the FDA this morning. It’s at $5. It made no sense that the stock didn’t go up to me. I thought it should’ve been up on the news.”
Nio: “Nope. Not recommending that. Not recommending any of the Chinese stocks. In particular, I don’t like that stock. I just feel like there are people who want to speculate all the time on China. This is a different kind of China than what we’re used to. It is a communist country that does not seem to favor capitalist development anymore.”

Grab Holdings: “We thought that was interesting when we looked at it. We like it. It’s got much more than just Uber. … I like the stock. I like it. We liked it when we looked at it.”
International Paper: “Cheap stock, but always a cheap stock. I don’t want a stock that’s always a cheap stock. I want a stock that moves higher.”
SMART Global Holdings: “I’ve got to relook at it because this is involving smart phones, and smart phones are under pressure here.”
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The Novavax Covid-19 vaccine could be cleared by 10 regulators for use in multiple countries, including the U.S., in the coming months, the vaccine maker’s CEO said Monday.
The company expects feedback from American regulators in February, Stanley Erck told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
The vaccine is currently available for use in 170 countries.

The Novavax coronavirus vaccine could be cleared by regulators for use in multiple countries, including the U.S., in the coming months, the vaccine maker’s CEO said Monday.
The company has filed for emergency approval with 10 different regulatory agencies, Stanley Erck told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” It’s currently available for use in 170 countries, he said.

“I expect in the next 90 days we could have all 10 of them,” Erck said.
The company submitted its final data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on New Year’s Eve. It has yet to file the full application for emergency-use authorization, but will do so shortly and expects a decision from American regulators in February, he said.

Erck didn’t name the other regulatory agencies, but according to the company site, it has recently applied for approval in Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Several other health agencies across the globe have already given their nod of approval to the vaccine.
Novavax recently shipped its first doses of the vaccine to Europe, Erck said, after receiving authorization from European Union regulators last month.

“Everything is coming together,” Erck told CNBC.
The vaccine could be in high demand. Novavax’s vaccine is protein based, using an alternative technology to the more widespread mRNA vaccines. Skeptics leery of the mRNA technology may be inclined to get the Novavax version, Erck said, which also has been seen to present fewer adverse side effects than other vaccines.

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Shares of Rivian continued to fall during afterhours trading Monday after confirming its vehicle production last year as well as the departure of an executive.
The stock closed Monday at $81.44 a share, down 5.6%.

Rivian R1T all-electric truck in Times Square on listing day, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021 in New York.
Ann-Sophie Fjello-Jensen | AP

Shares of Rivian Automotive fell 5% in afterhours trading Monday after the company said it missed its 2021 vehicle production target and confirmed the departure of its chief operating officer.
The electric vehicle start-up said it built 1,015 vehicles in its first few months of production – falling 185 vehicles short of an initial manufacturing target. Of those vehicles, 920 were delivered to owners, Rivian said in a release.

The final tallies, which were announced after the markets closed, did little to help the company’s stock, which lost 5.6% earlier in the day before closing at $81.44 a share Monday.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Rivian Chief Operating Officer Rod Copes left the automaker last month as the company was ramping up production.
A Rivian spokeswoman confirmed Copes’ departure to CNBC, characterizing it as a retirement that was planned for months. She said his duties have been absorbed by the Rivian leadership team.

The production results come less than a month after the company said it would fall “a few hundred vehicles short” of its 2021 production target of 1,200 vehicles. Rivian executives said it faced supply chain issues as well as challenges ramping up production of the complex batteries that power the vehicles.
Rivian started producing its first vehicle, an all-electric pickup called the R1T, in September, followed by an electric SUV in December.
The company went public through a blockbuster IPO in November.

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