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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) warehouse workers in Alabama who want to unionize will be allowed to vote on the matter, says the National Labor Relations Board.
Last month, he Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed paperwork for an election that would represent 1,500 warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama.
Amazon filed documents with the NLRB, saying the action would actually represent more than 5,700 employees, which meant the union likely had fewer than the 30% of worker signatures needed for the regulator to oversee the election.
The NLRB disagreed, saying it was “administratively satisfied” that the threshold was met.
If the workers vote in favor, Bessemer would become the first U.S.-based Amazon facility with a union.
The EU conditionally approves Google’s (GOOG,GOOGL) $2.1B acquisition of Fitbit (NYSE:FIT).
Google will have to silo off user data and not use it for targeted advertising and ensure that Android phones will continue to work with other fitness wearables and smartwatches.
The tech giant’s antitrust concessions are binding for at least 10 years.
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager says Google’s concessions “will ensure that the market for wearables and the nascent digital health space will remain open and competitive.”
Fitbit share are up 0.7% pre-market to $7.25.
AT&T (NYSE:T) is off 1.6% in early going after Morgan Stanley cuts to Equal Weight, as the “balance of catalysts seems to be shifting towards the downside.”
The stock has rallied off some clarity on free cash flow and the dividend, the firm says. But other risks are showing up in the C-Band spectrum auction and the prospects for wireless switching.
There’s three key reasons to head to the sidelines, Simon Flannery and team write: They’re “increasingly concerned’ that the C-Band auction will be more expensive than expected, creating “incremental strategic and financial risk”; a robust 5G smartphone upgrade cycle next year creates risks for AT&T; and there’s a lack of near-term catalysts after the company’s dividend freeze and provision of early FCF guidance.
Getting a lot of C-Band spectrum will be key for AT&T and rival Verizon, to be able to build a mid-band 5G network to compete with T-Mobile’s rollout, the firm says – and early bidding suggests upside risks for AT&T.
Morgan Stanley’s base case is for AT&T to spend $7.2B for about 100 MHz of nationwide C-Band – but current bidding (auctionwide) has already paced it toward the total acquisition costs over the next three years, and bidding is still rising more than $4B per day. And AT&T may be constrained by its balance sheet, compared with Verizon.
With high levels of consumer interest in the new iPhones, the industry could see heavier churn along with upgrade activity (and rivals are offering attractive incentives to switch away from AT&T). “Earlier this year we analyzed prior smartphone cycles with our quant team and found that AT&T’s equity returns are negatively correlated with changes in smartphone sales growth.”
Morgan Stanley cut its price target to $34 from $36, now implying 14% upside.
And while Wall Street has shifted Neutral, most Seeking Alpha authors are Bullish. One recent exception: contributor Niki Schranz’s answer for “Why are Shares So Cheap?” lies in management “destroying shareholder value in a pursuit of becoming the next Netflix.”
SpaceX (SPACE) could be at the forefront of a radical change in communications using quantum physics, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas.
The crux of the excitement is that a space-based quantum communications network offers longer reach and is more configurable that a terrestrial fiber based network.
Jonas unleashed: “From a SpaceX perspective, the commercial potential of quantum communications networks and its potential advantages of its rapidly deploying in-space comms architecture may provide significant optionality to the story and its valuation.”
“While, to our knowledge, SpaceX has not commented in detail on the enabling technology (ie. particle entanglement generators, quantum repeaters, random number generators, advanced cryogenics, etc) or the economic potential of quantum communications, we believe the company’s increasingly dominant position in space, satellite communications and DoD/government work makes this a natural extension of their capabilities. SpaceX continues to solidify its place as ‘mission control’ for the emerging space economy. Important milestones with Starlink, Starship and government contracts dovetail to support strong commercial momentum. We note that our recently revised EV valuation to over $100bn (bull case >$200bn) does not include any direct valuation attribution related to quantum communication networks, quantum based metrology or cryptography.”
What kind of upside is there in being a quantum Internet leader? Morgan Stanley Asia Technology analyst Shawn Kim says quantum network technology looks very much like the early days of the Internet in 1969.
Back down on Earth, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Fidelity were early investors in SpaceX along with Elon Musk and various venture capitalist firms.
Investors looking to invest in the space sector in general have the Procure Space ETF (NASDAQ:UFO) to consider, which includes Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) and ORBCOMM (NASDAQ:ORBC) as top holdings.
Chinese chip giant SMIC (OTCQX:SMICY) is seeking talks with Dutch semiconductor equipment company ASML (NASDAQ:ASML) for EUV lithography equipment, according to Digitimes sources.
SMIC has reportedly struggled to obtain the equipment from ASML, which isn’t legally bound by the U.S. supplier ban on the Chinese company but could still prove wary of stoking tensions.
Extreme ultraviolet or EUV lithography uses light with a very short wavelength to create billions of tiny structures on silicon that make up a chip. EUV equipment can produce smaller, faster, and more powerful chips than older styles of lithography machines.
SMIC reportedly needs the equipment for its sub-7nm process technologies.
ASML shares closed U.S. trading up 1.2% to $477.30. U.S.-based semiconductor equipment companies Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX), Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT), and KLA (NASDAQ:KLAC) closed down 1.4%, 1.2%, and 0.3%, respectively.
Earlier today, Deutsche Bank sidelined Lam Research in a downgrade, citing potential risk factors that include the U.S. ban on SMIC.
