After 33 years of operational difficulties, American vaccine development company Novavax has finally received approval for its COVID-19 vaccine shot. According to testing results, the Novavax vaccine has efficacy rates that are of a similar level to the vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech as well as Moderna.
As the first vaccine approval in the company’s history, Novavax’s COVID-19 shot proved to be the financial success that it needed to fend off the ever-looming threat of having to delist from the Nasdaq composite index. Instead, Novavax shares have skyrocketed this year by a margin of 106% to a price of $229.
With a current market value of $15.4 billion, this vaccine development firm has been running late-stage vaccine trials in the United States, the results of which are expected to be released next month.
Should the two-shot vaccine be authorized for use, the next challenge for Novavax would be to develop the capacity to distribute the vaccine in large quantities. In 2019, the firm sold a large portion of its manufacturing assets in an effort to recover some of the capital that it desperately needed to remain above ground.
