Bavarian Nordic’s majority shareholder, ATP, is disappointed after two failed vaccine trials have shaved 40% off the Bavarian’s value over the past year.

Nevertheless, ATP, one of Denmark’s largest pension funds, supports the management’s strategy and the vaccine company which ATP believes is worth more than the current share price reflects, Danish business daily Børsen writes.

”If the company itself does not believe that phase III will turn out positively, who will? We make our own assessment of the projects, and we had quite positive expectations for the RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] vaccine and were also disappointed when we saw the result,” Claus Berner Møller, deputy director of Danish equities at ATP, tells Børsen.

ATP owns more than 10% of the shares in Bavarian Nordic. This share has fallen drastically in value over the past year. During this period, Bavarian Nordic first shelved a vaccine against the respiratory disease RSV and then finally acknowledged that there is no commercial potential in the company’s vaccine against coronavirus.

Along with the other major shareholders, ATP backed the company’s strategy of financing the pivotal trial itself instead of sharing the risk with a partner. However, it would be too much of a hindsight analysis to say that management should have sought a partner earlier in the process, Claus Berner Møller told the media.

”I can’t say that I feel misled by the management of Bavarian Nordic on this,” he says.

He elaborates that the core business in the form of the company’s travel vaccine business has great growth potential and that on this basis he predicts that the assessment of the share price will change in the future.

(Translated by DeepL with addition editing by Christian Radich Hoffman)