The value of the day on Wall Street: heavy fall of Novavax – 08/09/2022 at 16:30


(AOF) – Novavax fell more than 30% to 39.9 dollars. In one year, the biotech title has shrunk by 83%, penalized by the company’s inability to quickly produce its Covid vaccine and quickly obtain the green light from the FDA, unlike Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna. As a result, the group has halved its forecast for annual turnover and unveiled quarterly results below expectations.

The biotech now expects a turnover of 2 to 2.3 billion dollars for 2022, while it had previously announced a target of 4 to 5 billion dollars.

The FDA last month cleared the use of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, which does not use the same technology as vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The group spoke of lower-than-expected demand for its vaccine.

For the second quarter, Novavax posted a loss of $510.5 million, or $6.53 per share, compared with a loss of $4.75 per share a year earlier.

Revenue reached $185.9 million, compared to $298 million last year.

Analysts on average had expected earnings of $5.54 per share on sales of $1.02 billion, according to FactSet.

AOF – LEARN MORE

An inevitable race for new blockbusters

The patent for Merck’s star product, the cancer drug Keytruda, which accounts for more than 35% of its sales, expires in 2028. Despite the loss, since 2019, of the patents for its three star products (Avastin, Herceptine, Rituxan) Roche was able to renew its portfolio by bringing new molecules to market. However, the discovery and launch of new drugs are increasingly expensive. AstraZeneca spends about $6 billion a year on R&D in a pharmaceutical industry where the life of a patent only lasts ten to fifteen years. This leads laboratories to withdraw from certain activities. Thus J&J, Pfizer, GSK and, no doubt, Novartis soon prefer to refocus on specialty drugs and abandon any ancillary activity.



Source link -86