China's Response To Shield Economy From Real Estate Storm, Biden Targets Cancer, Diabetes Drugs In Controversial Medicare Price Battle, Google Collaborates With Nvidia In AI Expansion: Today's Top Stories

Bloomberg

China is pulling out all the stops in response to the brewing storm within its real estate sector, aiming to prevent the cascading impact from reaching other sectors and economies.
On a recent note, the world's second-largest economy has issued a directive to prominent state-owned banks, mandating substantial reductions in bank deposit and mortgage rates.
The report highlights the insufficient domestic demand and challenges confronting certain businesses, indicating a necessity to stimulate private investments via focused policies.

Benzinga

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services unveiled the first ten drugs subject to price negotiations under President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
The negotiated prices for the ten therapies will take effect on January 1, 2026, according to revised guidance published by CMS.
October 2 is the deadline for companies of drugs selected for the Negotiation Program to submit manufacturer-specific data to CMS to consider in negotiating a maximum fair price.

3M Co MMM confirmed reaching an agreement with the court-appointed negotiating plaintiffs' counsel to resolve the Combat Arms Earplug litigation against it and Aearo Technologies.
Under the agreement, 3M will contribute $6.0 billion between 2023 and 2029, with $5 billion in cash and $1 billion in stock.

Catalent Inc CTLT, valued at around $8 billion, has finalized a deal with activist investor Elliott Investment Management.
Catalent's board has also established a new Strategic and Operational Review Committee to review the company's business, strategy, operations, and capital allocation priorities.
Catalent reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $0.09, missing the consensus of $0.10, with sales of $1.07 billion, down 17% Y/Y, slightly above the consensus of $1.05 billion.
The company forecasts FY24 sales of $4.30 billion-$4.50 billion versus the consensus of $4.21 billion and $4.28 billion in FY23.

e.l.f. Beauty Inc ELF has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Naturium skincare brand for $355 million. The transaction will happen in a combination of both cash and stock.
The company expects the deal to double its presence in skin care to approximately 18% of retail sales.
Naturium had a net sales growth of approximately +80% CAGR over the last two years, and about $90 million of net sales is expected this year.

Wall Street Journal

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google Cloud, voiced plans to ramp up artificial-intelligence technology enterprise offering at Google's annual cloud conference in San Francisco.
Also, it looks to offer tools that can help draft emails or summarize lengthy documents stored in the cloud, intensifying rivalry with the second-largest cloud provider, Microsoft Corp MSFT and ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Reuters

Intel Corp INTC eyes a next-generation data center chip. Likely for a 2024 launch, this chip promises to provide over double the computational capability for each unit of power consumed amid global efforts to reduce energy consumption.
The anticipated "Sierra Forest" chip from Intel will likely present an impressive 240% enhancement in performance per watt when juxtaposed with its current data center counterpart.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc META hit the headlines Tuesday for reports indicating Canada's news ban's failure to dent Facebook usage and the company's success in disrupting a disinformation campaign linked to Chinese law enforcement.
Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news in August.

CNBC

Microsoft Corp's MSFT president and vice-chairman, Brad Smith, voiced the threats associated with weaponizing artificial intelligence.
Smith emphasized the need for human control over AI, irrespective of whether a government, military, or organization slows things down or turns things off.
"It is a tool that can help people think smarter and faster. The biggest mistake people could make is to think that this is a tool that will enable people to stop thinking," said Smith.

Amazon.Com Inc AMZN raised its free shipping minimum to $35 for non-Prime customers in some regions. To date, the free shipping minimum was $25.
Prime members who pay $139 annually enjoy free delivery on over 300 million items.
Amazon had boosted the minimum free shipping to $49 from $35 back in 2016 and then revised it to $35 in 2017. It later lowered the price to $25 to rival Walmart Inc WMT, which has a $35 free shipping minimum for non-Walmart+ customers.

Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google looks to license new sets of mapping data to companies to help build products around renewable energy and targets a revenue of up to $100 million in its first year.
It eyes the sale of access to new APIs (application programming interfaces) with solar and energy information and air quality.

Earnings

Chinese electric vehicle startup Nio Inc NIO reported second-quarter revenue and bottom line results that trailed the consensus forecast, reflecting a decline in vehicle sales and margin contraction amid a tough pricing environment.
Looking ahead, the company guided for strong growth in deliveries and revenue for Q3.
Vehicle deliveries fell to 23,520 units, down from 25,059 units in the second quarter of 2022 and 31,041 units in the first quarter of 2023.

Best Buy Co Inc BBY reported Q2 FY24 sales of $9.58 billion, beating the analyst consensus estimate of $9.52 billion.
Adj. EPS of $1.22 beat the analyst consensus of $1.06.
For FY24, the company revised guidance for revenue to $43.80 billion-$44.50 billion from $43.8 billion - $45.2 billion against the Street view of $44.3 billion. It now expects a comparable sales decline of 4.5% to 6.0% (vs. 3.0% to 6.0% earlier).