Shine comes off vaccine stocks

Shares in Covid-19 vaccine maker Novavax plunged last week after it warned of “substantial doubt” regarding its financial future. Novavax shares skyrocketed during the pandemic, valuing the company at $23 billion (€21.7 billion) at its February 2021 peak. Today, following a 97 per cent share price collapse, it is worth less than $600 million – below its pre-pandemic levels.

Novavax’s woes are largely company-specific, with manufacturing delays resulting in its vaccine not receiving US regulatory approval until July 2022. By then it was late in the pandemic – too late for Novavax, which has delivered a fraction of the vaccine shots expected.

That said, Novavax is not the only Covid vaccine maker to disappoint shareholders. Pfizer shares have lost almost a third of their value since late 2021 and are barely above pre-pandemic levels. Moderna shares have lost almost three-quarters of their value since peaking in 2021. The sell-off has recently gathered pace, after it dramatically lowered 2023 sales expectations.

The world has moved on from Covid and the vaccines have, as the Financial Times’s Lex columnist notes, “become a humdrum commodity far faster than investors expected”.