- Air Canada shares slid after the airline accepted a federal aid package.
April 14, 2021
📈 Grab Goes SPAC
Happy Wednesday. We know how frustrating Canada's vaccine rollout has been (trust us, we write about it everyday), but it's important to remind ourselves that we are making progress. Which is why we wanted to highlight that 20% of the country has now had at least one dose.
So stay strong everyone, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Markets
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TSX | 19203.70 | 0.01% |
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S&P 500 | 4141.59 | 0.33% |
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DOW | 33677.27 | -0.2% |
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NASDAQ | 13971.50 | -0.36% |
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Gold | 1745.90 | -0.1% |
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Oil | 60.59 | 0.68% |
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Dollar | 0.80 | 0.21% |
- 8,522,568 doses have been administered in Canada, as of writing. 20.3% of Canadians have received at least one dose and 74.5% of doses delivered have been administered.
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Percent of population who have received at least one dose: Israel: 61.5%, U.K: 47.4%, U.S: 36.1%, Canada: 20.3%, E.U: 15.7%.
- Canada confirms first case of highly rare blood clot after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
- Milestone alert: 20% of Canadians have now received at least 1 COVID-19 dose.
- Trudeau says Canada is closely monitoring the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause in the US (keep reading for more).
🚨 SPAC ALERT! 🚨 Grab is going public through a SPAC deal with U.S.-based Altimeter Growth Capital for $40 billion USD.
What is Grab? Grab is more than Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing company—it’s also known for its digital banking and food delivery services. Its meteoric rise intimidated ride-hailing competitors like Uber and Gojek in the region.
- Competition became so stiff that Uber agreed to sell its Southeast Asia business to Grab in exchange for a 28% stake in 2018. That’s a steal for both companies, if you ask us.
From Wall Street to Asia: What started out as a trend in the U.S. market is now heading to Asia.
- SPAC deals in Asia have raised ~$3 billion in 2021 alone, and the Grab merger will set a record for the world’s biggest SPAC deal.
The SEC is a party pooper:
- The SEC warned last week that it would be taking a closer look at SPACs going forward, and expressed concerns about risk assessments, fees, and potential conflicts of interest
- This could mean that Grab's merger with Altimeter will take longer than expected
Zoom out: SPACs have been in vogue for the past year but new SEC regulations might make them as out of fashion as wearing white after Labour Day.
We just want to know what new games are in store for us. Epic Games just closed a $1 billion funding round, propelling it to a $29 billion valuation.
What is Epic Games? Epic Games is an American video game developer. It’s best known for Unreal Engine, the software tool behind Fortnite, which is so popular that it’s now more of a cultural icon than a just a video game.
- Epic loses a ton of $$$ when it pays developers some hundreds of millions of dollars to create games each week that are free for people to download and play.
- That sounds expensive, but it’s a lot cheaper than paying devs per copy (totalling ~$18 billion in retail value).
The details:
- Epic wants to use the funds to build out more social components and help developers create more games.
- The company is battling it out with Apple next month in court over Apple's decision to kick Fortnite off the App Store for doging Apple's surcharge on in-app payments.
- Epic's latest funding round counters one of Apple's arguments that Epic isn't all that profitable on its own.
Bottom line: A lot of us have turned to video games to cure our boredom during the pandemic. Even though it's not ideal for our sleeping habits, video game companies are doing better than ever.
I know it looks like we just got lazy with the headline, but that's actually the name of Spotify's newest launch.
The streaming service released a voice-controlled device for cars, its first gadget, yesterday. The name makes sense now, right?
What is it?
- Car Thing is about the size of a smartphone with a touchscreen and knobs to navigate selections.
Why they made it:
A lot of people don't drive cars that have modern entertainment systems (the average car in the U.S. is 11 years old), so the Car Thing's USB, AUX, and Bluetooth connections is a major selling point.
- Spotify also doesn't work with Siri, so giving people a voice-controlled Spotify experience while driving could help the company compete with Apple Music.
When can I get one?
It's only available in the U.S. right now to a limited number of Spotify Premium subscribers. We know, bummer. If the soft launch goes well, Spotify will sell Car Thing for $80 USD.
Big picture: Spotify has toyed with the idea of hardware in the past (including musical lightbulbs) but nothing has ever come to fruition, until now.
The streaming platform said that Car Thing is a one-off launch and that its goal remains to become the "world's number one audio platform."
This might put a dent in our hot girl summer plans. U.S. health officials suggest pausing the use of J&J's vaccine over blood clot concerns.
- Health officials were excited about the J&J vaccine's approval — it requires just one dose and doesn't have high maintenance storage requirements.
- The J&J vaccine had a much slower rollout than Pfizer and Moderna thanks to production and manufacturing issues.
What happened?
- Six out of the ~7 million people that received the J&J vaccine formed a rare blood clotting disorder within weeks of administration.
- All six cases were in women aged 18-48.
- The blood clotting effects of the J&J vaccine are rare, so the pause is more of a cautionary move.
It's great that public health officials were quick to pause the J&J vaccine rollout, but the move could fuel vaccine hesitancy.
Zoom out: Health Canada is keeping a close eye on the J&J vaccine, which has been approved in Canada but doses haven't arrived here yet. This is the one time we're grateful for a slow vaccine rollout.
Those are two words that can’t mean good news. Laurentian University fired around 100 profs and shuttered underperforming programs in its latest round of cuts.
The Sudbury, ON university is scrambling to get its &%$@ together as it struggles to pay back creditors.
What happened? Decades of mismanagement, coupled with low enrolment, a tuition freeze, and the pandemic, put Laurentian’s financial health is in a bad place.
- Ontario universities are heavily subsidized by the government and, at least to date, the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education has been unwilling to boost Laurentian's funding to make up for the large deficit.
Without additional government funding, Laurentian applied for court protection in February to buy some time to pay around $322 million back to banks. The cuts are part of a restructuring to get the university back on its feet.
Zoom out: Laurentian's drastic cuts will interrupt students' education and have long-term effects on the local economy, as the university is Sudbury's third-largest employer.
- The Trudeau government is in full support of the controversial Enbridge pipeline over the Great Lakes.
- Bitcoin prices surge (again) ahead of Coinbase's IPO
- May 3rd is the target date for reopening of the Atlantic Bubble.
- Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright during a routine traffic stop resigns.
- W.G. Galen Weston, who built the Loblaws empire, has died at 80.
- The world's longest rabbit is MIA.
- How much do you need to earn to buy a home in Canada? Check out these handy charts.
- Watch these fox pups come out of their den for a serotonin boost.
- For all the math lovers (not me) and doughnut eaters (sounds more like me), here's how many doughnuts it would take to power your house.