SHORT THREAD: The syringe company @SRuhle and I wrote about just got ANOTHER federal contract for ($54M) to create new capacity so that it can fulfill the OTHER federal contract it got ($84M) to make hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine syringes. 1/x https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/covid-19-helped-small-syringe-business-boom-then-came-taxpayer-n1231656

The company, Retractable Technologies, was experiencing a boom when it received a $1.4 million PPP loan for struggling small businesses and was on the verge of landing what is now more than $135 million in federal contracts. That's three times its sales from last year. 2/x

On May 1, Retractable got the lion's share of an initial government order of 300 million-plus syringes to be ready for a COVID-vaccine (a deal that had been in the works since late March, before the PPP loan). 3/x

If you bought Retractable stock at the beginning of the year and sold it at 11:45 yesterday morning, you made a killing. The price spiked to over $9/share yesterday — it was $1.53 at the beginning of the year. 4/x https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/07/08/heres-why-retractable-technologies-is-skyrocketing.aspx

Just to keep this straight: The federal government awarded a no-bid contract for the needles Americans need for a COVID-19 vaccine to a company that required a second massive contract to build the operations it was on the hook to deliver. Amid that, the firm took PPP money. 5/5