Novavax’s (NVAX) stock was trading down more than 6% Tuesday afternoon after the company lowered its guidance for sales for the year.
The company now expects $650 million to $700 million in revenue for the year, down from previous guidance of $700 million to $800 million. Novavax reported $85 million in revenues for the quarter, down from $187 million the year prior, and loss per share of $0.76, compared to a $1.26 loss per share a year prior.
Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine continues to be its only commercial product and currently has about 2%-3% market share, according to a Jefferies analyst note to clients earlier this month.
Compared to mRNA competitors Pfizer (PFE) and Moderna (MRNA), Novavax is at a disadvantage because of its size, which has repeatedly stunted its market share potential. It’s why Novavax is now relying on a $1.2 billion deal with Sanofi (SNY) to sell its product — a strategy the company hopes to emulate with others to bring in more cash.
“We’re getting out of the game of, every year, putting 90-plus percent of our effort, energy, and resources into strain change, manufacturing, global distribution, and trying to market this,” CEO John Jacobs said.
The Sanofi deal helps shed significant costs every year and will bring in cash through royalties. The partnership also allows Sanofi to use the company’s adjuvant, Matrix-M, which helps boost the effectiveness of the vaccine, for other products.
“If you look at the redacted contract, there’s stipulations in there. The first few [products] that they would [develop] with Matrix-M, there’s no scientific access fee,” Jacobs said, noting that there would eventually be a fee for Sanofi’s use of the adjuvant, paired with milestone payments and royalties for 20 years.
“I can’t speak for them on how many vaccines they’re intending to at least experiment with and take a look at, but … there’s no limit on how many [in the contract] and they’ve stated they want to build a portfolio of assets,” Jacobs said, referring to the contract with Sanofi.
Novavax also announced another, unnamed, large pharma company has also signed a deal to license the adjuvant for use in current and new products.
“We’ve been sharing some data in the public domain on how Matrix-M might be able to help others with existing portfolios and/or develop new assets they might not have been able to do before because they didn’t have an adjuvant or the right adjuvant,” Jacobs told Yahoo Finance.
The company will, meanwhile, focus on its early pipeline of products, as well as restart its Phase 3 flu-COVID combination vaccine clinical trial — which it had to halt after a severe adverse reaction that was eventually determined not to be caused by the vaccine.
