Thursday 17th June 2021
In the wake of a vaccine flop
Curevac takes Bayer and Wacker with it
The low effectiveness of the corona vaccine from Curevac dampens hope in the vaccine. Investors on the stock exchange react promptly. It’s not just the biotech company’s papers that are slipping. Bayer and Wacker Chemie are also clearly affected.
After the setback for Curevac, Bayer are now also coming under pressure. The shares of the pharmaceutical company lose 1.3 percent in early Frankfurt trading and are at the end of the Dax. “Bayer has entered into a production cooperation with Curevac, which seems to be the next flop for them,” said a trader.
Despite the weak interim results on the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine, Bayer will continue to support the Tübingen-based biotech company. When asked, a Bayer spokeswoman said the support would continue and the final results of the approval-relevant study were still pending. Curevac announced on Wednesday evening that an interim analysis had shown only “a preliminary effectiveness of 47 percent against Covid 19 disease of any severity”.
Bayer wanted to produce the Covid-19 vaccine as a service provider for Curevac in Wuppertal from the end of the year. A delivery of 160 million cans was agreed for 2022. A building that was only completed a few years ago and in which Bayer originally wanted to produce a blood thinner was to be used. The offer for production is available, the spokeswoman said. She didn’t want to say how much money Bayer is investing in this.
As a production partner, Wacker Chemie also gets under the wheels. The stocks lose 6.4 percent and hit a four-and-a-half-week low. Production of the mRNA-based Curevac vaccine at Wacker’s biotech site in Amsterdam was originally supposed to start in the first half of the year, preparations for this as well as for technology transfer and test runs have already begun.
A spokesman for Wacker Chemie did not want to comment on the consequences of the study at the moment. According to earlier statements, Wacker wants to start producing Curevac Covid vaccines as soon as it is approved.
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