It's the PlayingFTSE Halloween Special! With Paul unwell, the Steves don their scariest outfits and take to the microphones for a special Halloween-themed episode of the show where we talk about stocks, financial markets, and investments. This week's game has a Halloween twist to it. Steve D grapples with questions concerning our favourite pharmaceutical company in the Bristol--Myers Squid Game with a special trick-or-treat twist! How much did BMY spend on Celgene? How many ETFs own the company? And what was Squibb's first name? Find out the answers to these -- and more importantly, whether Steve D knows the answers to any of these -- in this week's game.
After the game, it's on to the news and an interesting set of earnings reports. Snap's earnings came in strong but the stock responded badly, causing sympathetic drop offs from Twitter and the company formerly known as Facebook. The Steves give their different ideas about what brought this on and what it might mean for the sector more broadly.
In other news, all that work we did on Paypal's acquisition of Pinterest has to go in the bin. Paypal have said the deal's off (was it ever really on?!) and the share prices have reset themselves accordingly. But with Pinterest now back where it was plus a bit more of a discount in line with the general post-Snap movements, does that make it a buy? Steve D gives us his thoughts.
There's also the good and the bad of big pharma to talk about. On the bad side, Johnson & Johnson have spun out their lawsuits relating to asbestos-laced baby powder into a separate company which seems to be preparing to file for bankruptcy. Is this ok? Is it legal? And what does it mean for J&J? Steve W leads the way through a discussion of these issues.
And we finish where we started. Back to Bristol-Myers Squibb. With news breaking of BMY looking at a deal to buy Aurinia, the Steves have a think about the deal, what the acquisition of Aurinia might add to BMY, and more generally, what it is about the company that makes them the Playing FTSE preferred big pharma over its rivals. All in this week's Playing FTSE Podcast!