PARIS (Agefi-Dow Jones)–Valneva said Thursday that it will no longer invest in its Covid vaccine program unless it finds new customers and financing in the coming weeks.
“Valneva will only invest in the future development of its Covid-19 vaccine or a second-generation vaccine if it reaches an agreement with potential customers and receives the necessary financing during the third quarter of 2022,” said Valneva. the biotech company said in a statement.
Valneva said it would continue with some ongoing clinical trials, including on the potential use of the vaccine as a booster. The group is the only French laboratory to have received marketing authorization for its anti-Covid vaccine in the European Union, in June 2022.
However, the company had to scale back its commercial ambitions after the European Commission sharply reduced its order, to 1.25 million doses instead of the 60 million initially planned.
Valneva said Thursday that it hoped to sell a total of eight to ten million doses of its vaccine on international markets and that it would maintain stocks for possible additional supply from European countries.
“After two years of focusing our efforts on Covid-19, we are reorienting our strategy” in favor of advancing the rest of the portfolio, said Thomas Lingelbach, Chairman of the Management Board of Valneva, during the presentation of the results. the group’s half-year reports to analysts.
Valneva has two vaccine candidates in late-stage development: VLA1553 against chikungunya and VLA15 against Lyme disease, developed in partnership with Pfizer. It intends to file an application for authorization of VLA1553 in the United States by the end of the year, as well as an application in Europe in the first half of 2023.
During the first half of the year, the biotech recorded a net loss of 171.5 million euros, compared to a net loss of 86.4 million euros a year earlier, mainly due to the operating loss linked to the Covid-19 program which has increased by 55.2 million euros in the meantime. Its turnover almost doubled, to 93.2 million euros, due to a payment from the British government following the cancellation of a contract in 2021. For the current year as a whole, Valneva expects revenue of between 340 million and 360 million euros.
-Francois Schott, Agefi-Dow Jones; 01 41 27 47 92; [email protected] ed: VAL
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August 11, 2022 10:49 ET (14:49 GMT)