Teva CEO: We Have Capability To Distribute Vaccine In U.S.

trading eleven dollars and eighty six cents a share. But here today the stock is not nearly Let's break down the earnings and the key issues facing Tiva Pharmaceuticals. We do that today with Corese Schultz, CEO of Tiva Pharmarmaceuticals. Cour thanks so much for joining us here. Let's kick it off, get right to it. Talk to us about your earnings for the most recent period and your outlook for this year. Thanks Paul, great to be with you

and Monny. I think the earnings report for the fourth quarter is a really solid one, and I think the whole report for twenty is also very solid. You could say, we had, of course, lots of operational challenges due to the COVID nineteen pandemic pandemic, but in all manufacturing sites, in our whole logistical network, we managed to overcome it. Basically serve the two on a million patients we serve every day without Generics in a pretty steady way, and

supporting healthcare systems worldwide. At the same time, we managed our cost well, so they were down for the third year in a row. We managed to increase our earnings slightly, which was also positive. And then we continue to pay down debt. And I'm shure you know by now over the last three years, I've been paying down the two ten billion dollars and we'll continue to do so in in this year and in the common years. So all in all, we've stabilized the business. Yes, core of favorable

credit markets for sure. I want to ask you about that more in a moment, But first, the vaccine distribution in Israel has been among the best in the world, and you've obviously been very much part of that. How does that continue and have you have you plans to expand that internationally if you advice for other countries. So it's absolutely correct that we are taking care of the

whole logistical side of the vaccination program in Israel. So basically picking up the cargo from the cargo plane signated our chio logistics center, repacking, ensuring freezing and cooling and distribution, making sure it gets out to the four hundred vaccination centers in Israel, and that it's the right amount that gets to the right center at the right time. All all of course to ensure that we have a maximum utilization of the vaccines that Israel is receiving from FIFER

and from Moderna at at the current important time. So we have great i'd say, insight into how that works right now, I would say the only country where we really have an operational capability to to help out in the same way would probably be in the U s where we have the distributor company called and and we'll

be more than happy to help out the distribution. We're not currently law, but but who knows, maybe in the common months there will be a role for us to play there to secure fastness effective distribution of vaccines relevant locations. So UH core Tiva is one of the Farmer Circle companies that is being sued by the US as relates to the opioid crisis. Also, company is part of an

alleged drug fixing. Cartel talk to gives an update on these legal issues, because I'm not reading some Wall Street research.

They do weigh on the stock. What's the latest, Yeah, So the latest on the opioid litigation is really that we more than a year ago agreed to a framework with the states and the plane of lawyers that represent the subdivision, so counties, citizen and so on, and unfortunately we have not sort of got across the finishing line and we don't have the framework settlement turned into firm settlements.

We did this together with four other companies, the three big distributors in Johnson and Johnson, and nobody has reached the point where, you know, everybody signs a firm settlement. One of the reasons is that we have fifty states involved, we have fift planning lawyers, five companies, and even though each company does their own settlement at the end of the day, it has just proven difficult to get everybody to sort of sit down and do the final details.

And it has not helped that the COVID nineteen pandemic has delayed basically all trials, so all the trials that could have been trigger points by motivating people to get the framework into a firm settlement. All these trials have been delayed and they're still being delayed due to COVID nineteen, so I'm very optimistic that the actual framework will be implemented. We are offering free generics box and for all states.

That's a key product in sort of treating overdose, so basically reducing deaths from overdoses, which is a key concern of course, in the phase of the substance misuse among the American population. The other companies are basically offering cash that can be used to help get people off their situation with substance abuse. So the only good solution for the American public is, of course, as this framework gets into a firm settlement, and I hope this will happen.

I'm optimistic it will happen, but I'm a little doubtful about the timing, simply due to the fact that there is no legal pressure on the parties to get signed on the door line. So speak yeah, well, we'll definitely continue to follow that one. Finally, Core, you talked about the credit markets. Obviously they're hugely favorable for likes of Tever. In fact, yields now lower than when they were still rated investment grade by ratings agencies before it have it

became a fallen angel? Do you continue to just raise raise money on the credit markets to pay down debt? So we only raised money, you could say, when we have to, because we're paying down debt out of our operational cash throw as we go along. We did that last year with roughly two billion. We're going to do

this year with a bit more than two billions. And the next time where we really need to refinance, that is in two thousand twenty three, or that's the ditch stack of two thousand twenty three, that's about around four billion. That's more than what we expect our operational cash flow will be. So we will look like to do a refinancing about a year from now, where we will look at refinancing two thousand twenty three and potentially some of

two thousand twenty five. All right, well we have to say goodbye to you there, but thank you very much for giving us some of your time today earnings day and then always always such a busy day. That's Coral Schultze is a pharmaceuticals a CEO, joining us there after an excellent earnings season. You know, coming off of those march loads of last year, the sps of about seventy five, and a lot of folks are starting to get worried

about a bubble. And when you see stories like the game stop and all the spacks coming out, just adding to the concerns about are we a bubble? Uh? In this particularly in the equity markets. Let's chat about that with Jim Paulson. He's a chief investment strategist for the Louthhole Group. Joining us on the phone from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jim, thanks so much for joining us again here again a extraordinary move off the march lows here. How are you

viewing the markets right here? Yeah, Paul, thanks for having me today. Yeah, I am. I think that you know, there's certainly a lot of the indicators, sentiment indicators and like have certainly come up a fair amount and should could certainly bring in will bring sometime this year correction. Uh, I think we we could get at least one of those. I think it's going to come a little later, but I think that's very possible. But this this narrative that's

out there, it's gotten really strong. This the idea of the bubble major market mania bubble that's developing, it will resolve the collapse like the dot com collapse. I think that's got really low probability. Um. Yes, we've we've come up a lot from them March lows. But but if you look at over the last year, we might be up fifteen over the last three years, I think we've

analyzed around thirteen. And during the last two years, for example, of twenty four months, roughly this this SP five hundred has suffered to cline in late eighteen and thirty four percent decline last year. I just can't tell you another period where we ended up in a bubble during the twenty after twenty four month period where we had two really nasty our markets almost over the same time period.

And then if you look more broadly, Paul Um you know Russell large value UH international markets have gone nowhere for the last three years. There's still roughly flat and until November small caps hadn't moved higher. So I think it's overblown, I really do. You know. One of the things that presses me is talk about the Greenspan put well, we've got a vaccine. Put how much you're going to sell this market off when you know that by faller or so by the end of this year, there's pandemic

is gonna wind down a lot more. We've got a policy put, We've got another trillion dollar stimulus for MEEF package coming. It seems like every month, how much you're gonna sell off in the face of that, We've got an earning revival put going on earn These estments are coming up every day, and we've gotta we've got a bubble watch put. Can we really have a bubble when so many are worried about it? I don't know. Those

are the things I throw out. I guess, for how long can the federal Reserve and fiscals TOI met a slash pandemic relief keep the demand coming for these companies. I mean, you walk around any major city right now and it's absolutely it's terrifyingly bare well. The lonnie I, I personally don't know if we need a lot of our stimulus. That one of the things that's greatly underestimated is that there's about a one year to two year lag and historically between when stimulus is introduced and when

it starts to really impact the economy. So we're going to get a lot of juice from what we started to introduce last year, let alone the new stuff we're bringing now into the party. And at the end of the day, Um, the real issue is reopening and it's stimulus. Can't really do that, but we're going to get that. I mean, the biggest stimulus in the room isn't the

fiscal policy or monetary policy. It's a shot in the arm because by you know, if you think that sentiments too giddy right now in the investment markets, what's it gonna be like on VC day when we declare victory over COVID in the fall and there's gonna be heard that's fascinated and they are free to roam again and taking entertainment and social interaction demand. That will be spin. I mean, people are going to feel a palatable route. Do you should rethink this whole vaccine thing? Jim? What

do you think? So? Jim? Where are you in terms of are you in this rotation play that's worked so well for investors released since September? Kind of you know, maybe on the margin, lightning up on the Apples and the Amazons of the world and and looking for some of those cyclical names, maybe some of the small cap names that in fact would and will benefit from a reopening here. How do you feel about that? Where where

are you? Yeah? I definitely, uh, we've been overweighted what I call broader marketplace or UH at least since the middle last year or so. But you know, I would include you know, small caps, cyclicals, UH value stocks, high beta and international markets in that mix. I definitely want to be overweighted there, but I wouldn't exactly I be their way to tack the new era. But I don't think I totally get out of it. I think it's

going to continue. It's gonna underperform, probably, but it's gonna continue to participate, and it holds you up on bad days, you know, if it really the cyclicals and those more violably broader marketplace have greater volatility, and on those days, if you own some new era, it's gonna hold you up. So I own some of both. One of the things I'd say, Paul is that what I found consumer confidence is still very depressed. And Tavanni's point, you know, people

still feel pretty concerned about where we're at here. But if we are going to get people vaccinated here, I think consumer confidence is going to rally even more. And what I found is a very close relationship between improvements in main street confidence and what happens to these broader marketplaces like small caps and and I think there's still quite a bit of that ahead of us when you look ahead over the next year. Well, I'm looking forward

to speaking to you throughout this whole process. No doubt it's going to be a fascinating year. Thanks for joining today. Jim Pulls in a CEE IO at the loose Hold Group. The second impeachment trial of former President Trump really gets underway today. Let's get the latest with June Grasso, Bloomberg News legal analyst, host of Bloomberg Law. You can hear that weeknights at ten pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.

Joining us on the phone, June, talk to us a little bit about what we can expect from the actual

trial aspect here going forward. Well, what's going to happen today is probably starting out the same as yesterday, which is there were going to be a video presentation of what happened during the riot, and you can expect that the house managers are going to lay out their case in chronological order, so you're going to see a mix of talking and video, and they're hoping that this will sort of bring the senators back to that minute when they faced the crowd and proved to them that President

Trump should be guilty of of inciting the crowd. Are we absolutely certain that the time has passed when we might actually have witnesses as that decision come and gone at this point June, Well, the decision hasn't been made about witnesses, but the feeling is from all the reporting that there is probably not going to be any witnesses because basically of the time factor, you have both sides

wanting this to end quickly. The Democrats want Joe Biden to be able to get on with his agenda, and they also want to present a concise case unlike the last time, and the Republicans just wanted to be over. But I think they're going to be missing. The House managers are going to be missing an element of their case if they don't have witnesses, because we don't know what president former President Trump's reactions to the riot are.

We would have to hear that from witnesses, and also the delay he took in doing anything to stop it, and that goes to his intent and connects him to the crowd. And that's the important part of their case and the hard part. They have to connect him to what happened. And that's bold, sorry jump in, but that's what I find astonishing. So you can understand how Republicans may not want witnesses, but I'm not quite sure why

the House managers don't want witnesses so badly. I know, you join you say that it's the it's the Biden agenda and so on, but you know, well, no, I definitely think that they should have some witnesses. I think that they're afraid that it will get into For example, if you have a witness, then you have then the other side is going to call a witness, so it will drag it out. But I mean, look at Clinton's impeachment trial, there were witnesses, and right now the Democrats

are in control. There were no witnesses at the last impeachment trial of Donald Trump because they are Publicans were in control and didn't want witnesses. So you know, from my way of thinking, witnesses on at least one the issue of President Trump's intent would really go a long way. But also maybe the Democrats the House managers are thinking, well, nothing is going to get seventeen Republicans to vote with us,

so why drag it out. It's hard to tell, June, what do you think the Republican or the defendants defense in fact will be? What a good question, Paul, because I didn't necessarily get an answer. Yes, I know. The problem was, you know, yesterday what should have been a day that was fairly easy for them because they could have made legal arguments, even though the legal arguments weren't strong. What we saw that and it sort of echoed what their brief was. Their first brief was you know, filled

with errors. There was a typo on the first page, and it was very disjointed. And so the defense yesterday from Mr Caster, I mean, was rambling, almost nonsensical at times, and with the second lawyers shown there were conflicting arguments. It was, you know, it was too soon to try President Trump. There wasn't enough procedure, he didn't have any time. But then it was too late to try him because he was out of office, and there were factual mistakes

about the timeline of impeachment. So I mean, I suppose what their best argument will be is what the hardest part of the House Manager's cases, which is proving that connecting President Trump to the actual assault on the capital, and that is I mean, that's going to be tough. If this for a criminal case, which it's not. I don't think you could prove that beyond a reasonable doubt with the kind of evidence they have. Now it's not a criminal trial, and the as we've seen before, the

senators can do whatever they want. But I think that that element is going to be something that the defense can really focus on. You know President Trump speech, yes it was, it was heated, but he also said, which isn't played very much. What there was also a part of that speech, because I listened to the whole thing where he said, let's go to the capitol, let's march peacefully. There was one there was one sentence about marching peaceful.

They could take that sentence and use that to make their case that he did not want them to storm the capitol. He had no idea that this was going to happen. And since there'll be no witnesses, most likely they may be able to make a good argument out of that. I mean, they have a case to make. Very very briefly, do introducing some of these new videos or anything. Does that help with state cases or d

A cases down the line in any way. Well, I think that those videos are what the federal prosecutors and the FBI have been looking at to try to and they've been charging people based on those videos. I mean you'll see a charge and you'll see what the charges and then you see the video of that person doing something like throwing, you know, breaking through barriers. So yes, those videos are going to be used. And that's tough

evidence to get by. It's very hard to say, for example, oh, I didn't take this out of I didn't steal anything from the capital when there's a picture of you, you know, walking out with the podium of Jesse Pelosi. So I mean, that is really tough to have it. I expect a lot of play deals and I think the fans are going to try to flip a lot of people. June, we have to leave it there, but thank you so much, and of course we'll be tuning into Bloomberg Law for

further updates. Kristin Bryant is a Bloomberg opinion columnists covering industrial companies, also spacks and so much more. But he's written a great column on Elon Musk's bitcoin bet. He says it's a bean encounter as a nightmare. Chris, thanks for joining. So the backstory is that Ellen decided to put eight thirty billion dollars worth of Tesla's cash, not his own cash, but Tesla's cash into bitcoin, and of

course we saw a variety of responses. So many of them, as you can imagine, were absolutely thrilled with this idea, and you know, recommended other companies do the same. But what say you, was that advisable? M hm? So, to clarify, a one and a half billion dollars of Tesla's cat has gone into the bit climates is still an awful lot in the context of Tesla's overall cash balance of about nineteen billion, and yes, obviously a very risky approach

given how volatile bitcoin is. But the point of my column is to focus on on a rather geeky point, which is how you account for bitcoin, because cryptocurrencies are still so new that the accounting authorities haven't yet developed sort of real standards to how this is done, or at least the ones that they have sort of imposed on on bitcoin is sort of pretty outdated, and the accounting of the bitcoin is going to cause Tesla all

kinds of problems, as I can explain. Um, the chief problem is this, Essentially, if the price of bitcoin falls, then Tesla will have to book an impairment that this price goes back up again. It's not allowed to write up the value of its bitcoin holding, so in a sense, it can only lose Chris here. You know, as we've seen companies, obviously the line item on the balance sheet is cash and marketable securities. Bitcoin arguably is I guess it's a marketable security, but it's a very violatile one,

as you point out in your column here. Um, so what is a company like Tesla going to do here? Because the marketer market on this thing is crazy given the volatility. So what do they do? Do they hedge it? Well, that's a good question. I think they didn't say anything about hedging. Would be very surprised if they hedge it. I mean, obviously a lot of companies do hedge their foreign currency exposure. But it seems to me like tesser Is is making an outright bet here on on the

price of bitcoin. Um, what they're gonna have to do is is classify as an intangible asset on on the balance sheet rather than lump it in with their cash

holdings or as a financial investment. And as I say, well that that might end up doing, unfortunately, is hurting Tadler's earnings because you might have an odd situation where let's say the price of bitcoin is sold by one third, which is historically you know, not unlikely, incredibly volatile acid um Keadler having bought one and a half billion dollars work, would have to book a five hundred million dollar lost against its holdings that quarter, which obviously, you know, for

a company that still isn't that profitable, would actually be quite problematic. Now, of course, analysts would be able to look at the market price and say all that, actually the price of bitcoin is has now gone back up again and and and so this is uh, you know, only a paper loss. Nevertheless, my point is that, um, you know, a lot of people were saying, oh, look, Tessler has bought bitcoin. Other companies are now going to

diversify their cash holdings and do something similar. I think, unless these accounting rules are updated, a lot of companies will be very uh you know, in this inclined to do that because they don't want to have to explain to their investors every cause of well, you know, the price has gone up and down and we're booking and impairment and are lot you know, we're actually making losses and it's the profits due to our bitcoin investment. I think that a lot of let's say, more mature companies

might find that problematic. Have you been able to speak with anybody who wonders allowed about what might happen? So we know that central banks have literally, you know, in the last little while, just begun to take things like cryptocurrencies seriously, and you know what they might mean for the financial universe and so on. Is there a world in which regulators and accounting regulators do have a separate category for cryptocurrencies? I mean, this morning, he must tweeted

out that he's buying Dodge. Now, well, I think it's fanness that the accounting authority is recognized that this is a new world and that they do need to respond. It's been on their radar for a few years now. Interestingly, Japan's accounting authorities I think are the most forward thinking here.

They've already got a policy where essentially they allow companies to to mark to market the value of their holdings the international as of the i f r S rules, which are used widely outside of UH the United States, they're a bit different, but they they're slightly more nuanced than the US approach, So I think, yes, they are looking.

But interestingly, the the US had an opportunity in October when they find Financial Accounting Standards Board met to decide they were going to look at and going forward in terms of their technical agenda, and they declined to make cryptocurrencies and item on that agenda suggesting and they don't see it as a big parity, and it may well be,

of course, but you know, Tesla remains an outlier. I wrote about another company, micro Strategy, which had put you know, a billion dollars into its UH into bitcoin, and they've already seen you know, the price go up a lot and their share prices booming. But the same time they've also had to book impairments already because the price is so volatile. But apart from these two prominent outliers, and also Squares invested a bit, you haven't yet seen a

lot of other companies do this. And as I said, given these accounting issues, until they're solved, maybe big way so what do we has Tesla said Chris, kind of what they want to do with this investment. Do they view it as an investment per se? Why did they do this? Well, I mean the in the disclosures they say it's a matter of diversifying their cash holdings. And I suppose you know, literally you because it said, well, okay, we don't get much return on on cash at the moment,

so why not look for other opportunities. But of course I don't think anybody takes that, uh, you know literally in the center. Of course, there are far safer opportunities to diversify your cash holdings. I mean, this is is clearly, you know, a bet on on bitcoin, and and one

that's probably taken some of its investors by surprise. I think there were some reporting out of the Times of London this morning that some of the investors have said, well, look, we're happy for you to do this, but you know, there should be some limit on how much you should be able to invest in in bitcoin, because you know, Taysler until recently it was pretty cash strapped. Last year, of course it went out and raised about twelve billion

from um investors. Now much more cash on the balance sheet, but I think a lot of investors would be pretty upset if they weren't spent it all on bitcoin, because quite clearly the price can go up, but it can also go down. Fascinating story, Chris, thanks for bringing it to us. Chris Bryant Calmness covering industrial companies for Bloomberg Opinion. He's based in Berlin. Thanks for listening to the Boomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at

Apple Podcasts or whatever a podcast platform you prefer. I'm Bonnie Quinn. I'm on Twitter at Barney Quinn and Paul Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide Bloomberg Radio m