Monkeypox fears rattle Siga Technologies stock, JPMorgan revises its guidance, VMware stock jumps

Siga Technologies stock is down amid concerns over Monkeypox, JPMorgan stock soars after forecasting its goal of 17% return on tangible equity, and VMware stock jumps on reports of Broadcom talks.

Video transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Welcome back, everyone. It is time for our triple play. Now my two-- I did a twofer here-- SIGA and EBS are my tickers. Now this is after President Biden warned that everybody should be concerned about monkeypox. We saw related pharma stocks surging Monday. Siga Technologies jumped to a 52-week high in pre-open before paring back those gains, now down over 13% there and headed-- and staying down at the moment. And we also saw that it is up year to date. But that company actually makes a monkeypox antiviral called TPOX, and that's been approved in the European Union to treat monkeypox.

And that same positive momentum also boosting Emergent Biosolutions-- that's EBS-- which makes a smallpox vaccine that could be used to prevent monkeypox. And that's still in positive territory there, up just over 4% for the day. But you might remember EBS is one of the companies under investigation for manufacturing issues with the COVID vaccine. And that actually led to millions of doses being destroyed. So hopefully, some positive news here for EBS and hopefully some positive news in terms of solutions to what we're seeing with monkeypox.

SEANA SMITH: Hopefully, Rachelle, because I think we're all a little bit on edge, considering we're still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. But President Biden did sound a little bit of a warning when it comes to monkeypox, although he was quick to reassure, saying that the US has enough of its smallpox vaccines in order to deal with potentially an outbreak here of monkeypox in the US. But it is important to remind viewers there's only been two cases so far in the US, one in New York City and one in Massachusetts. So hopefully we don't see any more.

Moving on, one of the big movers today that I am looking at is JP Morgan, their rosy outlook sending shares soaring today. Now the bank revising its guidance. It now expects to reach key return targets earlier than forecast. It also anticipates credit losses to remain low through 2023. CEO Jamie Dimon looked to reassure investors at the bank's investor day today, saying that the economy remains strong and that, quote, "the storm clouds" that he talked about a few months ago, he's saying that they may actually dissipate.

So JPMorgan on pace for one of its best days in quite some time. You can shares rallying there. It's also taking some of the other big banks with it. Emily, we're looking at gains here from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi, Goldman. All of those big bank stocks in the green today.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Absolutely, Seana, although we should still point out that names like JP Morgan still down sharply for the year to date. That stock in particular still down by just over 20% now, though paring some of those losses. We're also seeing bank exposed ETFs and indices like the KBW Bank Index moving to the upside intraday trading.

Now the stock that I'm watching today is VMware. Now those shares are absolutely soaring. They're still up more than 20% today. And that's after Bloomberg first reported over the weekend that the semiconductor manufacturer, Broadcom, is in talks to buy the cloud computing company. Now we don't know exactly what valuation this deal would fetch. And this could still also potentially fall through since it hasn't been made official yet. Bloomberg did report, though, that the majority of this deal would likely be in stock, but also have a large cash element.

Now, all of a sudden, it's reasonable to assume that any deal would likely be priced at a premium to where VMware was valued in public markets on Friday. That was at about $40 billion on its market capitalization. It's now closer to $48 billion after today's share surge.

So this could potentially be one of the largest ever acquisitions we'll have seen in the technology sector. It would also be one of the largest software acquisitions for Broadcom after the company bought Symantec's enterprise security business back in 2019. But in terms of the deal timing, potentially, we will be seeing something in the coming days. That's what CNBC actually reported earlier today. So, certainly, a big piece of news that we'll be watching in the hours and days ahead, guys.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Indeed, and a lot of people were wondering about this pairing. They were like, is this something that Broadcom and some of these other companies need to get into if you already have your lane here? But cloud obviously something that's been very strong. We've seen it going well for Amazon. A lot of companies that were struggling a little bit with earnings, they did see some growth in their cloud. So that's definitely one to watch. And yeah, it should be an interesting deal to keep an eye on as well.

SEANA SMITH: We'll see whether or not it boosts Broadcom's business if, in fact, the deal does go through.