Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) was up 9.1% in midday trading Thursday after announcing it had signed a development and supply agreement with SK Bioscience, a subsidiary of SK Group, to produce the antigen component of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate . In addition, both companies have signed a letter of intent to make the Novavax vaccine available in South Korea.
Word of this deal comes on the heels of major international supply deals Novavax signed last week. On August 6, it signed a licensing agreement with the Serum Institute of India to deliver one billion doses of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine throughout India and other low- and middle-income countries. On August 7, Novavax signed a licensing agreement Takeda Pharma (NYSE: THANKS) Deliver 250 million doses of the vaccine in Japan.
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While the size of the SK Bioscience deal was not disclosed, Novavax has already built up enough production capacity to produce nearly 20 billion doses of its vaccine by 2021. Consider the opposite, however, the new COVID-19 vaccine candidate from Moscow-based Binnopharm, which Russian regulators approved for use this week, despite the fact that it has not yet been tested in a phase 3 clinical trial. Binnopharm has said it can produce only 1.5 million doses of its vaccine a year.
The announcement that the Russian vaccine candidate was approved for use in its home market this week sent COVID-19 vaccine articles tumbling. Novavax fell from $ 181 a share on Monday to $ 112 a share on Wednesday. That sell-off was probably an overreaction, though, given the limited production capacity available to produce that vaccine, and the lack of trial data showing if it works well enough to justify its approval.
For the year, Novavax stock remains up by more than 3,200%.
