The daily business briefing: April 6, 2020

1. Boeing extends suspension of production in Washington state

Boeing said Sunday it would extend indefinitely the suspension of production at its Washington state factories due to the coronavirus outbreak. The facilities had been due to resume work this week. While operations are halted, the largest U.S. aircraft maker will implement additional health and safety measures, including "new visual cues to encourage physical distancing," and more frequent cleaning of work and common areas. Boeing will stop paying about 30,000 production workers in the state. About 135 people in Boeing's global workforce of about 160,000 have tested positive, including 95 in Washington state. Since the coronavirus pandemic erupted, airlines around the world have halted new orders, compounding Boeing's troubles due to the grounding of its once-popular 737 Max jets after two fatal crashes.

Reuters

2. Apple delivers first face shields it is producing for medical workers

Apple is aiming to produce a million face shields for medical workers per week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Sunday. "We've launched a company-wide effort, bringing together product designers, engineering, operations and packaging teams, and our suppliers to design, produce, and ship face shields for health workers," Cook said. The company delivered its first shipment to Kaiser hospital facilities in California's Santa Clara Valley in recent days, he added. Doctors across the U.S. have been warning that supplies of personal protective equipment like face shields and masks were running dangerously low as hospitals in hot spots are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

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CNBC

3. Oil futures fall as Saudi Arabia, Russia delay meeting

Oil futures fell overnight after Saudi Arabia and Russia delayed a meeting on production cuts from Monday until Thursday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, are trying to reach a deal. Saudi Arabia launched a price war after Russia rejected OPEC's call for extending and deepening reductions in output to boost prices, and the two countries on Sunday blamed each other for the collapse in energy prices that followed. On Sunday night, the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell by 7.1 percent to $26.34 a barrel, after rebounding from recent losses with a record 31.8 percent increase last week. Brent crude futures were down by 6 percent after rising by 22 percent last week.

MarketWatch

4. Stock futures rise after last week's losses

U.S. stock index futures gained ahead of the start of Monday trading as several world hot spots reported a drop in new coronavirus cases and deaths. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq were up by 3 percent or more. Last week the Dow and the S&P 500 fell by more than 2 percent, and the Nasdaq lost 1.7 percent as markets continued to struggle due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, tweeted that he was "beginning to get optimistic" as cases in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, showed signs of peaking and some treatments seemed promising. "If this is true, the severity and death rate could be much lower than anticipated, and we could be closer to herd immunity than projected," he said.

CNBC CNN

5. 2 Walmart workers at same store die of COVID-19

Two workers at a Walmart store near Chicago have died from the COVID-19 coronavirus, the retail giant said Sunday. "We are heartbroken," Walmart said in an emailed statement, "and we are mourning along with their families." On Saturday, Walmart started limiting the number of customers in its stores to five per 1,000 square feet. Once that capacity is reached, no customer can enter until another leaves. "We have been concerned to still see some behaviors in our stores that put undue risk on our people," Walmart's executive vice president and chief operating officer, Dacona Smith, explained in a Friday blog post. "We want to encourage customers to bring the fewest number of people per family necessary to shop."

CNN