Bavarian Nordic CFO: Share price turbulence likely tied to biotech element
Bavarian Nordic’s share price skyrocketed during the summer of 2022 as Mpox orders spurred investor optimism, but such hopes have since been pretty much blighted.
An odd circumstance being that ordered Mpox inoculations continue to flow from the company’s vaccine plants. At the same time, Bavarian’s administration has said it expects next year’s Mpox vaccine revenue to exceed that of 2022.
”I really think we have repeatedly communicated in efforts to clarify what Mpox means for Bavarian Nordic both this year and the next. 2023 will undoubtedly become a record financial year [for us],” says Bavarian Nordic Chief Financial Officer Henrik Juuel in an interview with MarketWire.
The company’s equity slid by 2.2% in Wednesday trading, thus dipping below value from early 2022, when the group’s shares changed hands for DKK 268.8 (EUR 36.15), equating to a consolidated annual depreciation of 24.5%.
For comparison, the Danish C25 index has shed 13.8% thus far in 2022.
Over the course of the year, Bavarian’s stock price hit a low point at DKK 115.75 in mid-May, after which the Mpox vaccine sparked a deluge of orders flowing toward Bavarian Nordic, thus prompting investors to buy up the company’s stock. Such trading sent the share price to its 2022 peak of DKK 401.7 in early August.
Juuel says this autumn’s hard price decline should thus be seen more in the context of the global economic situation, which has become far tighter as the year progressed as the world’s main central banks have turned increasingly hawkish on monetary policy, hiking interest rates on several occasions.
”We are in difficult market now, and unfortunately this often hits companies retaining a biotech element. Tech and biotech stocks, to name a few, where people more adverse to risk withdraw from the market,” the CFO says.
This sort of thing impacts the entire market and thus shouldn’t be directly associated to Bavarian Nordic, he elaborates.
”It’s probably also affected Bavarian Nordic, even though we see ourselves as a fully developed vaccine company. Of course we still have research and development, but lately in connection with Mpox we have also shown that we are becoming a profitable company,” Juuel notes.
Bavarian’s third-quarter financials showed company revenue exceeding DKK 1bn for the first time since inception. Moreover, operating earnings increased, and the bottom line showed a black figure for the first time in while. Here, the company reported post-tax profit of DKK 12.1m for Q3 against a net loss of DKK 81.4m year-over-year.
The group guides for full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciations and amortizations between 0 and DKK -200m, the aim being breakeven.
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