Ailing Vaccine Stocks

Even as investors turn toward a post-Covid world, vaccine makers continue to be top of mind. Shares of Novavax fell 12% today after the company told Reuters that it had delivered only about 10 million doses of its Covid vaccine. That's well below expectations, my colleague Josh Nathan-Kazis reports.

The company's Covid vaccine is currently approved for emergency use in several nations including India, the Philippines, and Indonesia. But the Philippines hasn't yet received a single dose, Reuters reported.

The delays are a disappointment for a company that had managed to surprise with its Covid-vaccine success. Here's Josh:

Novavax shocked investors in early 2021 when it presented surprisingly positive data on its Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine isn’t a messenger RNA-based vaccine, like those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, but rather a so-called protein subunit vaccine, a more-established approach. 

Novavax shares are up nearly tenfold since the start of the pandemic, though they have fallen 74% in the last 12 months.

Even Pfizer hasn't been immune to vaccine disappointments. The company said today that it expected some $55 billion worth of total 2022 revenue from its Covid vaccine and antiviral treatment. That wasn't enough. Josh notes that Wall Street analysts have been expecting a combined figure closer to $57 billion for the Comirnaty vaccine and the Paxlovid anti-viral treatment.

Pfizer's stock fell 2.8% on the day. (Shares of rival vaccine maker Moderna were down 4.3%). Josh wrote late today that Pfizer's vaccine guidance may have been misconstrued by investors. The guidance was specific to sales that have already been made. “There are several governments that are under negotiation right now,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told Josh in an interview that published shortly after the market closed. 

“I don’t want myself to give a guidance that these numbers will go up, because that has very different weight, but clearly, if you see the trends in what is happening, it is a very reasonable assumption that these numbers will go up,” Bourla said.

Josh also spoke with Pfizer's chief scientific officer about vaccines for younger children and about the company's next-generation Covid anti-viral pill. You can read the full story here.