By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Now, time for some of today’s training tickets. We’ll check in on shares of vaccine makers, as well as D-Wave Quantum and Viking Holdings. First up, we’ve got Moderna, Pfizer, other vaccine makers getting a lift after the Food and Drug Administration provided new regulatory guidance for Covid boosters. It’s going to limit future Covid vaccines to older and at-risk Americans and will only recommend, won’t recommend the boosters universally as well. There were concerns that the new rules would be more stringent for vaccine makers and so that seems to be why largely they are rallying in the wake of that.
00:51 Speaker B
Yeah. So it sounds like, okay, this would add a costly requirement, but the shots would still be available at least for high, high risk folks and that, that I guess was a relief because the concern to your point really was, wait a minute, are there’s a whole wave of restrictions coming? So some relief there. I did see Bloomberg analyst saying the new FDA guidance may be a silver lining, they said, for Covid vaccine makers could increase the use of shots given how many folks have other health conditions.
01:36 Speaker A
Right. And basically a lot of the sentiment surrounding this FDA with HHS over above it is that in general they’re not going to be friendly to vaccine makers. So we’ve gotten some developments including the Novavax approval that maybe is causing some relief broadly for these types of companies.
02:24 Speaker B
All right. Another name here. Shares a D-Wave Quantum soaring today on the release of its latest quantum computing system named Advantage 2. Uh so this one moving higher, D-Wave Quantum shares tacking on nice gains announcing the general availability of this Advantage 2 quantum computing, computing system, saying so powerful apparently they can solve hard problems outside the reach of one of the world’s largest X scale GPU-based classical supercomputers. Remember it comes after, I think we talked about this truly last week, quantum computing post results last week, talked about entering 2025 with strong momentum. So seeing some of these names get a recent lift.
03:34 Speaker A
Yeah, I mean, this is a very heavily shorted name. We should mention 21% of its float is sold short according to data tracked by Bloomberg. So you are likely seeing a short squeeze at least in part, but we know there’s a lot of retail interest in these quantum names and so they tend to be pretty volatile on headlines like this.
04:12 Speaker B
And by the way, all six analysts who cover this one say it’s a buy. No holds, no sells. Interesting. Yeah, across the board. Shares of Viking Holdings as well, the cruise company falling today despite a strong first quarter earnings report. The company’s 2026 booking rate slightly lower than the same period last year. The company’s revenue in the first quarter was up 25% and said it was seeing strong demand for its European trips. Viking, primarily known as a river cruise company, but it does have some ocean cruising as well. It said 37% of its capacity is booked out for 2026, but it looks like that, that number is what something that investors are focused on.
05:15 Speaker A
Wow.
05:18 Speaker B
Yeah. I mean executives saying, you know, sounds kind of confident tone. They said, uh, talked about seeing sustained strength in demand. They talked about 92% of 2025 capacity already booked, how effectively selling out the year given our typical load factor. Jefferies to your point did say July, Wall Street may see 2026 bookings of 37% as a slight disappointment and that’s what looks like down about 6%.
06:03 Speaker A
And just want to mention as well, remember, this company just lapped its one-year anniversary as a public company. Came public in April of last year at 24 bucks, trading above 40. So you’re still seeing a positive return on your investment if you got in there.
06:24 Speaker B
Yeah.