CureVac priced its initial public offering at $ 16 per share. The stock grew rapidly more than 200%, to about $ 49.
The company that competes with the likes of Modern (MRNA), Novavax (NVAX), BioNTech (BNTX) en Pfizer (PFE), is also supported by billionaire Dietmar Hopp, the co-founder of German software giant sop (sop).
Hopp owns almost half of CureVac. The German government and Big Pharma leader GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) also have large stakes.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the benevolent arm of the multibillionaire Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder and his wife, invested $ 40 million in the company in 2015.
CureVac recently received approval from the governments of Germany and Belgium to begin clinical trials for one of its Covid-19 vaccines.
The company generated € 17.4 million ($ 20.6 million) in revenue in 2019, an increase of 35% from the previous year. It is not yet profitable.
CureVac also has another big name in its roster of partners: the company is working on technology with Elon Musk’s electric car giant Tesla (TSLA). The company has had a development and intellectual property agreement with Tesla since November 2015, according to its registration certificates with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk tweeted last month that Tesla’s German Grohmann division is helping build molecular prints for CureVac – a “side project” that could work with other drug companies.
CureVac is one of several biotechs that has also attracted the attention of the Trump administration. The company denied published reports earlier this year that President Trump was seeking to get some of the company’s German scientists to come to the United States to work on a fax machine.
However, Hopp has not ruled out the possibility that the company is working more closely with the US.
He said in March that CureVac “is committed to the goal of protecting all people from infections and improving therapies for patients worldwide”, adding that the company’s intention is to “create sustainable innovative infrastructure and jobs in Germany.”
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