Novavax’s Revenue Falls Short. Management Expects a Surge.

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The Covid-19 vaccine maker

Novavax

expects sales of between $4 billion and $5 billion in 2022, it said Monday as it reported less revenue than expected for the fourth quarter.

The biotech reported revenues of $222 million after the market closed. The consensus call among analysts surveyed by FactSet was for $332 million.

Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine returned promising data in Phase 3 trials last year, but has yet to be authorized in the U.S. The company says the vaccine is authorized in the European Union, Australia, Canada, and Great Britain, among other markets.

Investors have grown frustrated with the company, which has reportedly run into production issues. In early February, Novavax acknowledged a Reuters report that it had completed delivery of only 10 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine so far, far fewer than expected.

Novavax shares are up more than 1,900% since the start of 2020, when they began the year below $4. They closed at over $300 per share in February of 2021, but have since fallen. Monday afternoon, the stock was trading at $80.56, down 43.7% so far this year, and off 66.5% over the past 12 months.

Novavax’s forecast of 2022 revenues of between $4 billion and $5 billion is in line with the FactSet consensus call of $4.7 billion.

Novavax (ticker: NVAX) also said that data from an extended analysis of the Phase 3 trial of its Covid-19 vaccine that it ran in the U.K. demonstrated efficacy of 82.5% against all infections after six months. The data was collected from November  2020 through May 2021, before the Delta and Omicron waves.

“We are encouraged to see that our COVID-19 vaccine maintains a high level of durable efficacy and continues to exhibit a reassuring safety profile in this extended timeframe,” said the company’s president of research and development, Dr. Gregory Glenn, in a statement.

Revenues for the full 2021 fiscal year were $1.1 billion, the company said, up from $476 million in 2020. The company attributed the increased revenues to sales of its Covid-19 vaccine to companies that have licensed the vaccine for sale in South Korea and Indonesia.

Novavax said it spent $2.5 billion on research and development in 2021. It reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $846 million, and a net loss of $1.7 billion for the fiscal year. Analysts had expected a net loss of $124 million in the fourth quarter and $1 billion for the fiscal year.

The company said it ended 2021 with $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

“NVX-CoV2373 has now received regulatory authorizations globally, representing the potential to reach more than six billion lives,” said the company’s CEO, Stanley C. Erck, in a statement. “We are confident in NVX-CoV2373’s potential as a vital vaccine option due to its reassuring safety profile and demonstrated efficacy against variants with the benefits of refrigerator-stable storage.”

The company said that it has developed an Omicron-specific version of its vaccine that is now being tested in the lab.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]