Twitter removing over 1 million spam accounts a day, Bed Bath & Beyond stock soars

Yahoo Finance Live looks at several of today's trending stocks, including Merck as it continues its negotiations to acquire SeaGen.

Video Transcript

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- Welcome back, everyone. Triple Play is on deck, and Anjalee Khemlani is joining us today. So I'm going to kick us off with my pick, which is Twitter. Now, Twitter stock actually getting a bit of a boost today, and that's over news over the number of bots on the platform being well under the 5% disclosed in filings. That's according to company executives.

Now, you'll recall that this debate over bots, or automated accounts, has been at the center of this back-and-forth between the company and, of course, prospective buyer Elon Musk. Now, Musk had previously tweeted he thought the number was closer to 90%. Twitter says it manually reviews thousands of accounts in each quarter to assess that 5% number using internal and external data, including things like IP addresses and phone numbers to verify that there's an actual human being running the specific account.

Now, with the bots apparently off the table for now-- don't hold your breath, though. Now, that was seen as holding up the deal. That does mean, though, will Musk actually end up buying Twitter now? And more importantly, at what price per share? Since announcing his plan to buy Twitter back in April, the stock is down more than 20%.

- And one would presume Elon has been using this all along as a negotiation point. We're talking about a 37% premium from the $54.20 that he offered for Twitter. So you have to imagine, despite the 5% number being where he wants it, he's still going to use that 20% as a negotiation stance. We'll see if this ends up in court.

He hasn't been real clear about where it's headed, other than that Twitter Q&A, but it's nice to finally clear up that number. I think it was so difficult because so many people on Twitter are silent. They don't tweet. They simply read. Maybe that's why it took so long.

My play is Bed Bath & Beyond. At one point, shares were down almost 70% year to date. It's been ugly. BBBY has been circling the drain, if you will, in recent weeks, given its poor performance and even suggestions that the store had turned down air conditioning to save money. They pushed back on that account.

Bed and Bath recently announcing an operating loss of $224 million-- not billion; million-- and had just $107 million on cash. But today, a vastly different story with shares surging 23%. The company's interim CEO, Sue Gove, purchasing $230,000 worth of stock, according to a new SEC filing, putting her money where her mouth is after promising to deliver a brighter future. Hard to make much of this.

$230,000 stock, not enough to drive it up 23%. But AMC is up. And the memes are up. Game stock up as well. So it's just been one of those wacky days, Anjalee.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: It really has. And if you think about BBBY specifically, I mean, they've had a rough couple of years, right? We're talking about constantly circling the drain. That's a quote about them for the last few years looking back.

So they really seem to be-- they have tried to come back. And whether or not they succeed in coming back again, like, who knows? It's one of those things where there's pressure from so many sides you can't even predict it at this point.

- Need to bring back some big brands. And most people have pressure on them to sell Buy Buy Baby. That's been the big question looming for a number of months.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. So my pick today is Merck for obvious reasons. The stock saw a boost briefly following news that it was finalizing a deal with Seattle-based Seagen, and that is a biotech focused on cancer care in Seattle. The "Wall Street Journal" reported that this could be a $40 billion deal, making it the biggest this year in what has been really a quieter year for biotechs.

Merck first signaled interest in the company with a $1 billion stake back in 2020 with $600 million up front in payments. But rumors of a talk began earlier this year, and the companies hope to close before the end of the fiscal quarter on July 28. So it really is just a few weeks away. That's the only-- the only thing that really stands to disrupt this deal is regulatory challenge.

We've seen under the new administration, the FTC has started to crack down on pharma M&A due to competition concerns. And then, of course, that follow-through of impact on pricing, which we know, priority for the administration if they could succeed. If this deal succeeds, it could be the largest since AbbVie's acquisition of Allergan in 2020 of $63 billion. So really a lot on the table here.

- I mean, we're seeing a lot of movement, especially in some of these cancer treatments, some of these companies tied to cancer treatments really making progress in their clinical trials. Seeing a lot of improvement there. And you mentioned AbbVie. AbbVie actually has a cash price of a one-month supply of Humira of $9,065 a month, making it the most expensive medicine that's out there.

So hopefully when it comes to pricing and we see some of these mergers, we'll hopefully see some of the prices come down. And as you mentioned, the US lawmakers keeping a close eye on those pharmaceutical prices.

- Biden administration not in any hurry to approve a lot of mergers, as we've noticed over the last several months. Anjalee, thanks so much for being here with us today.