US stocks are poised to travel south at the open on Wall Street.
Following them downward are shares in Perrigo Company (NYSE:PRGO), which are 2.61% lower at $70.90 in before-the-bell New York trade.
It comes as news emerged yesterday that the drugs maker has replaced its chief executive officer of less than a year Uwe Roehrhoff, with consumer goods industry veteran Murray Kessler.
Sir Richard Branson has always been known for aiming high.
But now the entrepreneur has said that space flight firm Virgin Galactic is just weeks away from its first trip into space.
Sir Richard is pitted against Elon Musk's SpaceX and Amazon to send the first fee-paying passengers into space.
He was quoted as saying to CNBC: "We should be in space within weeks, not months. And then we will be in space with myself in months and not years."
Elsewhere, Tata Motors (NSE:TATAMOTORS), the Indian car giant, saw shares lose 16% today after its subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) announced it would shut down a UK factory due to weak demand.
The subsidiary (JLR) reportedly said it would shut its Solihull plant in the Midlands for two weeks this month.
In other news, energy stocks yesterday halted nearly a fifth of Gulf of Mexico oil output and evacuated staff from 13 platforms as the so-called Hurricane Michael heads for a path up the US Gulf.
Experts have predicted the storm could become a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of up to 129 miles per hour.
Big oilers including Anadarko Petroleum Corp (NYSE:APC), flat at $69.27, BHP Billiton (LON:BLT), shares up 0.30% in London, BP (LON:BP.), up 0.052% and Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX), up 0.28% in pre-market, evacuated workers.
Conagra Brands Inc (NYSE:CAG) shares shed 1.50% to $34.13 in pre-market deals as it revealed it was planning a public offering of $575 million worth of shares.
The offering would represent around 4.2% of all the shares outstanding. The proceeds would help fund its pending acquisition of the food group Pinnacle Foods.
Pinnacle Foods Inc (NYSE:PF) today issued a third-quarter profit outlook, which beat Wall Street expectations, but warned of a sales shortfall.
Also in the news today is more on search giant Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
It said yesterday that it would shut down Google Plus, its answer to Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB.) social network, after it discovered a security breach, which exposed private data of up to half a million users.