TKC Holdings, a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital, is seeking creditor approval to spin off prisoner phone services company Inmate Calling Solutions via a management buyout.
Why it matters: When a for-profit prison services company like TKC decides a business has become too politically toxic to own, you know there's a serious problem. Particularly when it wants to divest so badly that it's willing to hurt its own credit-worthiness.
China has confirmed nearly 3,000 coronavirus cases, a contagious respiratory illness that has caused at least 81 deaths, and there are five confirmed cases in the U.S. — as thousands of people travel each day between the two countries. Dan digs in with Ron Klain, who managed the Ebola outbreak response in 2014 under President Obama.
What's happening: Three months after WeWork pulled its offering, we're expecting an offering above $1 billion this week and another next week. It also appears that mattress maker Casper will push forward with its listing, albeit as an "undercorn."
GM will detail plans Monday to invest $2.2 billion to retool its Detroit-Hamtramck plant for production of electric and autonomous vehicles, per multiple reports.
Driving the news: The vehicles include the Cruise Origin, which is the 6-passenger, driverless electric van unveiled last week.
The quality of North American leveraged loan covenants rose back near its weakest level on record in the third quarter of 2019, according to ratings agency Moody's.
What it means: Moody's Loan Covenant Quality Indicator (LCQI) "tracks the degree of overall investor protection in the covenant packages of individual speculative-grade leveraged loans issued in the US and Canada," the company says.
Netflix is the No. 1 streaming service in terms of the number of current users, capturing 64% of respondents in a recent survey of U.S. adults. But its future growth is much less certain, according to new data from CivicScience.
Why it matters: Since the start of the year, Netflix stock has caught fire again, outpacing Disney's stock by almost 13% year to date — up 7.9%, with Disney off by 4.6%.
The phase one U.S.-China trade deal will have little to no impact on sales this year, according to 63% of companies who participated in the latest business conditions survey released today by the National Association for Business Economics.
Why it matters: President Trump has championed the agreement as a "sea change in international trade" and the deal's signing has helped power U.S. stock indexes to fresh record highs, but business owners and economists are less enthusiastic.
A Gallup survey found that 23% of 2,431 adults reported eating less meat in the past year than they had in 2018, while the vast majority (72%) say they ate the same amount of meat.
Why it matters: A meat-intensive diet can increase a person's chances of developing certain illnesses like heart disease and require more resources to produce compared to a vegetable-based diet.
Mattress maker Casper Sleep on Monday seemed to acknowledge skepticism toward its upcoming IPO by disclosing that it doesn't expect to maintain the "unicorn" valuation it received from venture capitalists.
The bottom line: Casper plans to price shares at between $17 and $19, giving it a midpoint valuation of $705 million. It last raised private funding in early 2019 at a valuation of nearly $1.1 billion.
