Daily Brief United States: Intel Corp, Alphabet , Crude Oil, ArcelorMittal , Zoom Video Communications Inc, Immix Biopharma Inc, Domino’s Pizza, VolitionRX , Build A Bear Workshop and more

• Lip-Bu Tan, former CEO of Cadence and founding partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, will become Intel’s ninth CEO effective March 18
• Mr. Tan is an extremely impressive technology leader, speaker, & influencer with many and varied interests. He is an excellent choice for the most important CEO role in Intel’s history
• Press releases seem to emphasise Products over Foundry but any decision in this regard will take time so it doesn’t appear that Mr. Tan is simply following the board’s orders.

• The return of Mr. Tan as CEO suggests that spinning off or selling  Intel Foundry will accelerate, Intel’s focus should improve.
• It probably also means scaling down considerably Intel manufacturing plans and outsourcing more to TSMC. If you can’t beat them, join them.
• Now is not a good time to buy Semiconductor stocks. It will take a couple of years to fix Intel’s problems. TSMC will benefit.

• Google’s full stack approach to AI, led by Nobel Prize winner Demis Asabas, includes talent, models, platforms, and chips
• Generative AI is being used to enhance search and enterprise solutions, providing monetization opportunities
• Google prioritizes quality and safety in AI development, ensuring no margin for error in critical situations like medical queries

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• Hello, and welcome back to our weekly editorial on commodities and geopolitics.
• Trump is keeping us busy yet again, threatening to impose another 25 percentage points (which was pulled back a couple of hours later, as usual) on top of the steel and aluminum tariffs, targeting the Canadian car industry at the same time.
• By now, it’s very clear that his main agenda is to move jobs and factories to the U.S. by limiting imports—but the question remains: will he actually follow through?

• ArcelorMittal (MT US) reported an EBITDA decline for the third year in a row to US$7b in CY24. Targets $0.4b/0.6b of $1.9bn of planned strategic EBITDA growth in 2025/2026.
• Management has guided a slightly positive apparent global demand growth 2.5-3.5% ex China. Expects restocking demand in Europe. 
• Trades at 0.5x P/B vs 2-3x P/B for Indian steel mills JSW Steel Ltd (JSTL IN) , Tata Steel Ltd (TATA IN) , Jindal Steel & Power (JSP IN) 

• Zoom Video Communications reported mixed financial results, with its fourth-quarter revenue of $1.18 billion meeting expectations, but its guidance for the first quarter and full year falling short of analyst estimates.
• The company projected first-quarter revenue between $1.16 billion and $1.17 billion, below the expected $1.18 billion.
• Full-year revenue guidance of $4.79 billion to $4.8 billion also came in below the consensus estimate of $4.81 billion.

Immix Biopharma has been granted a Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the company’s novel sterically optimized CAR-T treatment, NXC-201, which is being developed as a potential treatment for relapsed/refractory amyloid light chain amyloidosis (r/r ALA). The RMAT designation offers several operational and regulatory benefits, which could streamline the clinical development and subsequent approval process for NXC-201, for example by enabling frequent interactions with the FDA. We note that NXC-201 has already been awarded orphan drug designation by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), reflecting a robust position in what could be key markets for the therapy. NXC-201 is currently being evaluated in the US-based NEXICART-2 trial, and the next update (expected in H125) may represent a near-term catalyst for Immix, in our view.

• Domino’s Pizza faced a mixed financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2024, with weaker-than-expected earnings leading to a stock decline, despite ongoing efforts to enhance value and operational efficiency.
• The company’s total revenue increased by 2.9% year-over-year to $1.44 billion but fell short of the $1.48 billion analyst consensus.
• Earnings per share rose by 9.2% to $4.89, just below Wall Street’s expectation of $4.90.

Volition continues to build data demonstrating that the Nu.Q® NETs H3.1 diagnostic platform is a potential breakthrough tool in sepsis management. These efforts underpin Volition’s aim to advance Nu.Q NETs as a rapid, accessible and accurate diagnostic test to manage this potentially devastating condition. Sepsis (immune system triggered organ dysfunction) affects c 50 million people a year worldwide, and results in c 11 million deaths. Further, every hour of delayed treatment raises the mortality risk by c 8%. In this note we review Volition’s recent updates from the ESICM Annual Congress, where it provided evidence across data comprising more than 3,000 patients that its technology can quickly and reliably detect the patients most at risk of mortality, septic shock and organ failure. Improving the identification and tracking of at-risk patients should help improve treatment paradigms.

• We are reiterating our Buy rating, $58 price target and projections for Build-A-Bear Workshop, with the company announcing 4QFY24 (January) results on Wednesday before the open.
• We believe, with impressive owned store results during the Holidays and the new third party locations becoming an increasingly higher piece of the overall profitability of the business, Build-A-Berar is poised for strong 4Q results and potential top and bottom line upside.
• Further, with the company enjoying a strong Valentine’s Day season and the Spring calendar materially more favorable, we believe management will be positive for FY25.