On this episode of Stock Movers:
- Shares of Dynavax Technologies (DVAX) soared in premarket trading after Sanofi agreed to buy Dynavax for about $2.2 billion, as it seeks to expand a vaccines business currently anchored by its flu shot franchise. The French drugmaker will pay $15.50 a share in cash for Dynavax, 39% above the Emeryville, California-based firm’s closing price Tuesday. The statement on Wednesday came minutes after Sanofi said the US Food and Drug Administration had surprisingly rejected its experimental multiple sclerosis drug tolebrutinib.
- Shares of Intel (INTC) fell in the early session after Reuters reported that Nvidia halted a test that uses the chip manufacturer’s 18A technology to produce its chips. Nvidia recently tested whether it could manufacture its chips using Intel’s 18A production process but stopped moving forward, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Nvidia did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment, while an Intel spokesperson told Reuters the company’s 18A manufacturing technologies are “progressing well.”
- Shares of AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) rallied ahead of the US market open after the company launched its largest-ever satellite from India, the first in a series of deployments to help AST compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX in delivering space-based connectivity to mobile phones. The BlueBird 6 satellite took flight at 8:55 a.m. local time from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in southern India aboard the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO’s LVM3 rocket. The successful launch is a big boost for the Texas-based company as well as India’s space program which wants to build its orbital space station among other ambitious projects.