There are not a few investors who have decided for months to participate in the search for the Holy Grail, or the vaccine capable of defeating the pandemic. Biotech companies like Cambridge Modern (Massachussets), led by the French Stephane Blancel who already months ago promised rapid development of a drug based on RNA, with the applause of Donald Trump himself. Or the pyrotechnics novavax, which specializes in vaccine development, is currently trading at $87,3 after nearly $190 when speculation assumed that target was close.
The phenomenon has only partially spared i Big Pharma, engaged in the race against the virus, all the more subject to sudden bursts of hope and possible cold showers, as research progresses. He knows something Astra Zeneca, this morning +1,3% to 8.200 pounds, one of the most followed companies, object of disappointment when it signaled a warning for the illness of a guinea pig patient (alarm then subsided). Today, according to the president of the Irbm research center in Pomezia, Piero Di Lorenzo, who collaborates with the University of Oxford for a Covid 19 vaccine, “it is reasonable to think that the first doses will be available by December”. But the race, in Europe as in America and Asia, involves hundreds of researchers, with ample mobilization of financial resources and the attentive participation of the financial world.
But, on closer inspection, the great mobilization around the pharma and biotech sectors has not yet provoked the rush to purchases that one could imagine. Of course, in Piazza Affari it runs Diasorin +1,80% (+100% since the beginning of the year), again on the shields for having launched a test on Sars yesterday and well done Recordati +30% from the beginning of January. But if you look at the US market, the sector index has advanced by 5,7% since the beginning of the year, just a tad better than the average of the S&P 500 (three points) while they are sailing well away from the highs Novartis and Pfizer although the British media have published a video where the first doses of the potential vaccine against the Covid-19 virus are seen coming off the production line of the Puurs plant in Belgium.
A feeling of caution dominates which contrasts with the general attention for the sector. The main reason for caution is linked to the forthcoming decisions of the Supreme Court which will have to rule on theAffordable care, that is, the health care reform voted under the presidency of Barack Obama. Any change that does not include significant cost controls will be viewed negatively by Wall Street. The prospect of a democratic affirmation in both houses of Parliament could, according to the markets, introduce a brake on the sector's profits.
But a lot of caution, says the Wall Street Journal, it is bound to leave room for a more positive feeling. “If there are no nasty surprises – writes the newspaper – the fundamentals will play in favor of the sector, starting with the aging of the population as well as the increase in sales for vaccine trials. Abbott Laboratories, for example, it has just communicated that, thanks to the tests on the Covid-19, sales in the third quarter grew by 40%”.
Abbott introduced seven different coronavirus tests and reported $881 million in revenue in this segment. The US government is spending $750 million to buy 150 million Binax NOW tests, a disposable product that can detect coronavirus infections in about 15 minutes.
