New vaccine to come
Biontech slips into the red
08/07/2023, 2:00 p.m
Vaccine pioneer Biontech is clearly feeling the effects of the end of the corona pandemic. The profit collapses massively – the Mainz-based company is even in the red in the second quarter. A new, adapted vaccine is scheduled to be launched in September.
The corona boom came to an abrupt end at the biotech company Biontech. In the second quarter, the Mainz-based pharmaceutical company posted a net loss of a good 190 million euros – a year ago it had posted a profit of 1.67 billion. Sales collapsed to 167.7 million euros from 3.2 billion in the same period last year. Biontech referred to write-downs at its US partner Pfizer. The affected stocks of the Covid vaccine Comirnaty that were expired or about to pass its expiry date. These would have significantly reduced Biontech’s gross profit share from the sale of the vaccine and thus also depressed sales and profits.
Biontech plans to launch an adapted Covid 19 vaccine in September. Subject to approval, the delivery of the vaccine adapted to the Corona variant XBB.1.5, a sub-variant of Omicron, should then begin.
Despite the lower sales, the Mainz-based company still spends a lot of money on research and development. In the second quarter, these costs were a good 373 million euros, just 6.5 percent below the previous year’s level, when Biontech was still bringing in billions in sales thanks to the corona vaccine developed together with Pfizer. But the demand for Covid vaccines collapsed with the end of the pandemic. For some time now, Biontech has therefore been concentrating more on its cancer research, in which the company has its roots, and is pushing ahead with the development of numerous drugs in the pipeline.
Seasonal demand expected for vaccines
“Our goal is to become an approved product line company by investing in our own clinical programs and complementing them with additional drug candidates from our partners,” said CFO Jens Holstein. “Given some uncertainty about revenue, we are also carefully monitoring our expenses by reviewing our cost base.”
For the year as a whole, Biontech is therefore only planning research expenditure of 2.0 to 2.2 billion euros instead of 2.4 to 2.6 billion. Holstein is also stepping on the brakes when it comes to capital expenditure, as well as selling and administrative expenses. For this year, Biontech continues to expect sales of Covid vaccines of around 5 billion euros (2022: 17.3) – in the first half of the year it was only 1.4 billion.
However, the company has long been anticipating seasonal demand for vaccinations, which means that the corresponding sales are expected in the second half of the year. Biontech only received 1.05 billion euros from Pfizer in July, and the companies also received payments of almost 438 million euros in August as a result of the amended supply contract with the European Union.