CureVac Stock Fell 39% After Its Vaccine Failure. More Pain May Be Coming.

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Wall Street analysts are taking a much more pessimistic view of

CureVac

because the inventory tumbles after the German biotech reported disappointing outcomes from a late-stage trial of a Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday.

In a notice out Thursday, Guggenheim analyst Seamus Fernandez wrote that he now estimates a fair-value vary for

CureVac

(ticker: CVAC) shares of between $15 and $30 per share, down from his earlier estimate of between $90 and $110.

That means that he nonetheless thinks the inventory has a long way left to fall, even after the 46.1% tumble it has seen because the market closed Wednesday, although Fernandez maintained his Neutral score on the inventory.

CureVac shares closed Wednesday at $94.79, and fell 9%, to $57.83, Thursday.

“This comes as a surprise to us,” Fernandez wrote. “We thought CVnCoV would at least be good enough, and outright failure is not something we accounted for in our original initiation.”

Bank of America analyst Geoff Meacham, in the meantime, downgraded the inventory to Neutral from Buy, and set a $50 worth goal. Jefferies analyst Eun Yang, who maintained his Hold score on the inventory, lower his goal worth to $45 from $58, calling the information “disappointing.”

“This could cast doubt on the competitiveness of its mRNA platform,” the Jefferies analyst wrote..

The dimming hopes for CureVac came after the company reported that its Covid-19 vaccine, CVnCoV, demonstrated 47% efficacy in an interim evaluation of a 40,000-subject trial, failing to satisfy the trial’s predetermined success standards. The trial is ongoing, and the efficacy numbers will not be closing.

The firm argued that the context of the trial was “unprecedented,” given the broad vary of virus variants current on the time it was performed. Still, the information was launched days after

Novavax

(NVAX) unveiled the outcomes of its personal Covid-19 vaccine trial, which was performed over the same interval and which resulted in an total efficacy determine of 90.4%.

CureVac’s vaccine relies on messenger RNA know-how, just like the vaccines offered by

Moderna

(MRNA), and by

Pfizer

(PFE) and its companion

BioNTech

(BNTX). CureVac is one of a handful of longstanding pioneers in mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines, alongside Moderna, BioNTech, and one other agency known as

Translate Bio

(TBIO). Shares of Moderna have been up 1.7% in premarket buying and selling on Thursday, whereas shares of BioNTech have been up 2%.

CureVac can also be growing one other mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine in partnership with

GlaxoSmithKline

(GSK), generally known as CV2CoV, which CureVac refers to as a second-generation Covid-19 vaccine. In his Thursday notice, Fernandez wrote that the corporate ought to shift focus to CV2CoV, and that he had eliminated gross sales of the primary vaccine, CVnCoV, from his estimates.

Fernandez had beforehand projected gross sales of $1.5 billion this 12 months, and $1.9 billion subsequent 12 months, for CVnCoV.

“We do think CVAC has a shot on goal with CV2CoV based on robust preclinical data, and we believe the technology platform has value, but a clearer clinical path amidst the increasingly saturated and competitive SARS-CoV-2 vaccines market is necessary,” Fernandez wrote. “With the removal of CVnCoV revenues but given that this is still a mRNA company with technology and a lot of capital, we’re assigning a fair value range of $15- $30 per share to CVAC.”

CureVac shares have been up 16.9% to date this 12 months as of the tip of buying and selling on Wednesday. The inventory went public final August, and it has not seen costs as little as its present premarket worth since final November.

CureVac didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

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