Novavax shares plunge after COVID-19 vaccine maker raises doubts over its future

Novavax — whose COVID-19 vaccine is its only marketed product after 35 years in business — on Tuesday flagged significant uncertainty around its 2023 revenue.

Novavax Inc.’s shares plunged 28 per cent in U.S. early trading on Wednesday, a day after the COVID-19 vaccine maker raised doubts about its ability to remain in business.

The stock fell 28.3 per cent to a three-year low of US$6.64 around 10:30 a.m. ET, while its Frankfurt-listed shares also slumped more than 27 per cent.

The company — whose COVID-19 vaccine is its only marketed product after 35 years in business — on Tuesday flagged significant uncertainty around its 2023 revenue, funding from the U.S. government, and pending arbitration with global vaccine alliance Gavi.

Novavax’s shot, a traditional protein-based vaccine, was pitched as an alternative to those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech in the hope it would win over skeptics of newer mRNA technology, but manufacturing and regulatory delays led to sluggish uptake in key markets.

In the United States, where the vaccine was authorized in July 2022, only around 80,000 of its shots have been administered, according to government data.

In Europe, the shot was initially given the green light in December 2021. Altogether, only 219,395 doses have been administered of nearly 13 million distributed in EU/EEA countries, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Control up to Feb. 23.

The vaccine was also endorsed by UK regulators last year. The Department of Health and Social Care did not immediately respond to a Reuters query on how many doses have been deployed so far.

Novavax, like other COVID vaccine makers, is also gearing up for changes to the way the vaccines are rolled out, with global regulators expecting vaccination campaigns to be conducted once a year, similar to flu inoculations.