Sébastien Thibault/The Globe and Mail
A humorous look at the companies that caught our eye, for better or worse, this week
Natural gas February futures (STAR)
Cold enough for ya? You won’t hear any complaints from natural gas investors. With a deep freeze settling over much of North America, the price of the furnace fuel soared 75 per cent over three days – putting it on pace for its biggest weekly gain in more than 30 years, according to Bloomberg. As you’re scraping the ice from your windshield and losing any feeling in your fingers and toes, take heart that someone is actually enjoying this.
Netflix Inc. (DOG)
Netflix landed 18 Oscar nominations this week, including Best Picture nods for Frankenstein and Train Dreams. Netflix’s stock, on the other hand, looks like a shoo-in for Worst Performance by a Publicly-Traded Streaming Service. Already down sharply amid investor worries about the company’s risky US$82.7-billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix’s shares sank to a 52-week low after the streaming giant projected that revenue growth will slow to about 13 per cent in 2026, down from 16 per cent in 2025. Who needs horror movies when you can scare yourself silly just looking at Netflix’s stock chart?
Moderna Inc. (STAR)
Pop quiz! Shares of vaccine maker Moderna rose after: a) The World Health Organization identified a new COVID-19 variant, believed to have originated in feral cats, that makes people meow and purr uncontrollably; b) U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the government plans to buy Moderna “so we can fire everyone and shut down its operations before any more lives are needlessly saved”; c) Moderna said a five-year follow-up study found that its skin cancer vaccine, when combined with Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda, reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 49 per cent in patients with high-risk melanoma. Answer: c.
Telesat Corp. (DOG)
True or false? When creditors feel mistreated, they rarely turn to the courts. Answer: false. Shares of Telesat dropped after lenders filed suit against the Ottawa-based satellite operator, alleging it illegally moved a 62-per-cent equity stake in its “crown-jewel” low-Earth-orbit satellite business to an indirect subsidiary beyond the reach of creditors. Telesat, which is facing US$1.7-billion of maturing debt in December and another roughly US$450-million in 2027, said the lawsuit is “without merit” and the equity distribution was done “in strict accordance with relevant debt agreements and applicable law.” Somewhere, lawyers are smiling.
Gold (STAR)
There once was a metal called gold
Whose gains were a thing to behold
With a fresh record high
Traders started to cry
“This is no time for people to fold!”