CureVac vaccine not very effective Crash of a Bearer of hope

Status: 06/17/2021 12:31 p.m.

CureVac’s vaccine proves far less effective than hoped, with the biotech company’s stock plummeting. What does this mean for the vaccination campaign and German taxpayers?

From Angela Göpfert, tagesschau.de

For the company CureVac and its owners, dramatic scenes have taken place in the past few hours. The price of the Tübingen-based company listed on the US technology exchange Nasdaq had already halved in after-hours trading on the US stock exchange on Wednesday. This morning, the CureVac share then rushed in German retail by up to 52.4 percent.

Eight billion euros destroyed on the stock exchange

This destroyed around eight billion euros in market value within a few minutes. This melted down from over 15 to a good seven billion euros. The drastic course reaction shows how surprisingly, despite all previous doubts, such devastating study data as CureVac has now presented, came in the end – and how serious the consequences could be.

On Wednesday night, CureVac announced that its first-generation vaccine candidate was CVnCoV only an effectiveness of 47 percent against a Covid 19 disease of any severity. The company thus missed the intended statistical success criteria for approval.

Completely out of the vaccination campaign?

The study is to be continued, and the degree of effectiveness could change with higher case numbers. However, if the current trend continues, approval is unlikely. In this case, experts say CVnCoV would be a total flop for the company. For the German vaccination campaign, CureVac is therefore canceled until further notice. “According to these study results, it will be extremely difficult for CureVac to play a role at all in the current vaccination campaign”, told LBBW analyst Timo Kürschner tagesschau.de . According to the federal government, the setback for the Tübingen company does not upset the vaccinations in Germany. “This announcement has no effect on the speed of our vaccination campaign”said a spokesman for the federal health ministry.

Other manufacturers are still catching up

Industry observers believe that speed is just as important in vaccine development as it is in drug development. “Late bloomers like CureVac only have a chance if they have a better effect profile or fewer side effects”, explains pharmaceutical expert Kürschner.

“The more time that elapses, the more efficient the production of vaccines that have already been approved will be”says the pharmaceutical expert. “BioNTech & Co. are then more and more able to serve the required delivery quantities.” His conclusion: “We could get to a point where you actually no longer need the CureVac vaccine because the vaccination campaign is already so advanced.”

Hundreds of millions from the federal government

The severe setback for CureVac meanwhile has effects beyond the current vaccination campaign. It meets the German taxpayers – after all, the federal government has a stake of around 16 percent in the company and has supported vaccine development with a special program worth several hundred million euros. It is also a debacle for SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp, who holds almost 50 percent of the shares.

Last but not least, the CureVac price disaster hits the countless private investors who have invested their money in the share. The paper of the company, which is legally based in the Netherlands, has been one of the most traded foreign stocks in the past few weeks on the Stuttgart Stock Exchange, where many private investors cavort.

Recently increased warning signs

Recently, there had been more and more indications that the CureVac vaccine could fail for the time being. Even when Health Minister Jens Spahn, according to media reports, deleted CureVac from the federal government’s planning for the current vaccination campaign, this could hardly affect the share.

The high market capitalization compared to rival companies was also a warning sign: Before the current price crash, CureVac had a higher market value than Novavax. The US manufacturer had already reported a Phase III study on Monday, according to which its vaccine had a has a high effectiveness of 90 percent .

Often high risk in the industry

For CureVac and its owners this is now the “Worst case” of a biotech company. At the same time, the CureVac case also shows the general risks facing the industry. Companies in this industry usually have very few active ingredients in their pipeline. If one then fails – for whatever reason – it often has fatal consequences for the entire company.

LBBW expert Kürschner also sees CureVac “a prime example of the risks involved in investing in biotech companies”. However, Kürschner does not fear negative consequences of the CureVac events for the German biotech industry. After all, there is a positive counterexample in the country. “I’m sure: BioNTech’s success story will outshine the rather negative course at CureVac.”

Industry collects billions Record sums for biotech companies

Status: 15.06.2021 10:46 a.m.

The successes of biotech companies such as BioNTech attract investors: The industry has a new financial record in Germany. But the exuberance could be followed by disillusionment. By Thomas Spinnler, tagesschau.de The entire biotech industry is currently benefiting greatly from the attention generated by the rapid and successful development of corona vaccines. The pandemic has given a boost to a sector that is already in the focus of many investors due to technological and medical advances in recent years. As the “Financial Times” (FT) reports, the venture capitalist Flagship Pioneering – one of the major investors in the Vaccine manufacturer Moderna – around $ 3.5 billion for a new fund. Its aim is to promote the next generation of biotech companies.

Fund tries a new model

When investing in the biotech industry, investors must calculate with particular risks. Many of the companies to invest in do not yet have a product on the market. It is uncertain whether this will ever be the case, as the path from research to a marketable product is very long and often fails.

01/06/2021

Flagship Pioneering is now trying a different way. What is special, according to “FT”, is that the fund’s goal is not the usual search for newly founded companies in which to invest. Rather, modern biotechnologies are to be developed in-house in certain segments under the umbrella of the fund. Only then are plans to set up companies as offshoots.

The profits are gushing

Unsurprisingly, financiers are on the lookout for business ideas; they smell a gigantic business. Just a look at the rapidly rising share prices of many companies in the past few months shows how convinced the market players are of a lucrative future for the sector. In fact, profits are gushing – at least for the best-known representatives who have successfully launched products. BioNTech generated a net profit of 1.1 billion euros in the first quarter of 2021. In the first quarter of 2020, the Mainz-based company had to accept a net loss of 53 million euros due to high research and development costs.

05/10/2021

The US vaccine manufacturer Moderna made in the first quarter profit – equal to a billion dollars. In the previous year, Moderna had to cope with a loss of 124 million. The turnover multiplied from eight million to 1.9 billion dollars. $ 1.7 billion of this comes from corona vaccine revenue. While Moderna shares rose by more than 200 percent in the past twelve months, BioNTech shares gained over 340 percent in the same period.

Lighthouse companies in particular benefit

In Germany, the biotech industry set a new financial record last year. As the experts from the testing and consulting company EY calculated in their Biotech Report 2021, financing in Germany reached a peak of 3.1 billion euros in 2020. A comparison with the USA shows the order of magnitude. According to EY, around $ 100 billion went into biotech financing for venture capitalists.

02/27/2021

“Covid-19 is a huge catalyst for the entire biotechnology industry,” said Alexander W. Nuyken, Head of the Life Sciences Sector in Strategy and Transactions at EY and co-author of the study. In their report, the experts at EY point out that the investments essentially relate to the flagship company BioNTech, which alone accounted for 51 percent of the financing volume in 2020. According to Nuyken, biotechnology is part of the solution to a problem that is a matter of fate for humanity. “That has come to mind.”

More help from the state?

This year it’s going on at a high pace: The “Handelsblatt” quotes from preliminary figures from the Bio Deutschland Association. Accordingly, the industry received a total of 870 million euros in capital from January to May. That is around three and a half times as much as in the same period last year. Nuyken campaigns for the state to help even more: “I hope that politicians show more will to improve framework conditions.” There is now an opportunity for the biotech scene to play a major role in this country in the long term or to play an even greater role in the future.

Hope for new products

In fact, taxpayers have already made a major contribution to making the industry so successful: Since the beginning of the pandemic, governments have allocated tens of billions to research and development on vaccines, which are now generating sales and profits for companies. However, it is uncertain whether, thanks to the many fresh billions, the supply of innovative medical products will make a leap. Nuyken warns of disappointing expectations: “If investors with no biotech experience think they can make a quick buck here, they’re wrong.” After the boom, the expert warns, disillusionment could quickly set in.