Global vaccine giants have reached a $1.2 billion partnership with emerging vaccine companies.
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi and US vaccine company Novavax announced on May 10 that they had reached a joint exclusive licensing agreement to jointly commercialize COVID-19 vaccine and develop a new influenza and COVID-19 combined vaccine. Sanofi also has a non-exclusive license for the Matrix-M adjuvant.
The total amount of the partnership is as high as $1.2 billion, with Sanofi paying $500m in advance, followed by $700m in milestone fees. Sanofi will also hold a minority stake of less than 5 per cent in Novak. Novax will receive a milestone of up to $200m and a median share of sales for the Matrix-M adjuvant license.
Novax is a Nasdaq-listed American biotechnology company, founded in 1987, headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, mainly in the field of vaccines, focusing on the discovery, development and commercialization of recombinant nanoparticles vaccines and adjuvants. During the global COVID-19 epidemic, as COVID-19 was in the forefront of vaccine research and development, he was once regarded as a dark horse company in the vaccine industry. The company also announced that it had received US $1.6 billion in support from the US government for COVID-19 vaccine research and production.
With the end of the COVID-19 epidemic, Novax's performance and share price are not good. Novax's share price soared after the announcement by the agreement officer. On May 10, Novax rose 146% to close 98% higher in intraday trading.Asiangames.66%, at $8.88 per share, with a market capitalization of $1.247 billion.
Novavax has only one product approved to go on the market, the COVID-19 vaccine NVX-CoV2373. As a result of the launch of the vaccine, Novax showed great confidence in the company's operations: revenue guidance for 2022 was as high as $4 billion to $5 billion. But during the second quarter of 2022, the company immediately lowered its revenue forecast to $2 billion to $2.3 billion.
At the time of the official announcement of the agreement, Novak also released a quarterly report for 2024, with first-quarter revenue of $94 million, an increase of 16% over the same period last year, which was lower than market expectations.AsiangamesThe net loss was $148 million, compared with a loss of $294 million a year earlier. Regarding this holding Sanofi, Novax CEO John Jacobs said bluntly in an interview with the media that this enabled the company to maintain sufficient capital and continue to operate.
Sanofi is one of the four vaccine giants in the world, and influenza vaccine is its trump card. During the epidemic, COVID-19 joined hands with GlaxoSmithKline to develop the COVID-19 vaccine, but because it was approved late in Europe and failed to get approval in the United States, it failed to achieve commercial success like Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
This time, Sanofi has reached a partnership with a rising star in the vaccine field, and Sanofi values the potential of combining each other's COVID-19 vaccine with the company's flu vaccine. Sanofi executives said that the admission rates of influenza and COVID-19 are now very close, and there is an opportunity to develop a non-mRNA flu-COVID-19 vaccine to provide patients with protection against two severe respiratory viruses. "We are excited about the prospect of combining Novavax's adjuvant COVID-19 vaccine with Sanofi's rich differentiated influenza vaccine, which has shown good effectiveness and tolerance, and has shown excellent protection against influenza and its serious complications."
It is worth mentioning that Modena in the United States is also developing a combined influenza and COVID-19 vaccine. According to news released during the 2023 earnings report, all three trials of its seasonal flu and novel coronavirus's combined vaccine mRNA-1083 have been included in the group, and the company expects the study data to be released in 2024 and is expected to be approved for market as soon as 2025.