By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Stocks of BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) and Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) were up in Monday’s premarket trading as the companies landed new deals with the European Union to supply more COVID vaccines at substantially higher prices.
BioNTech jumped 4% and Moderna 2%. Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), which jointly markets its vaccine with BioNTech, was up 1%. Expenses and profit from the vaccine are split equally between Pfizer and the German company.
According to the Financial Times, Pfizer and BioNTech will be paid 19.50 euro ($23.20) a shot, up more than 25% from their first contract, while Moderna will get $25.50, up over 10% from the previous price. The deals are for up to a total of 2.1 billion shots through 2023.
Vaccination in most parts of the world barring Israel, the U.K. and a few other countries, has been patchy. While governments struggle with vaccine hesitancy amongst people and try to procure vaccines from manufacturers, the virus continues to rage with varying intensities in many parts of the world.
The total addressable market for Covid-19 vaccines is expanding as countries start to introduce booster shot programs, against a backdrop of evidence that these provide longer-lasting immunity against the disease. Israel started rolling out booster shots to all those over 60 whose first jab was over five months ago. The U.K. government meanwhile is planning to offer booster shots to some 32 million adults from next months, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday. Vaccine makers have also lobbied the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for booster shots, but the FDA's response so far has been non-committal.
Last week, Pfizer said it expected $33.5 billion in revenue from sale of its COVID-19 vaccines. This reflects 2.1 billion doses expected to be delivered in 2021 under already-signed contracts as of middle of this month. It could supply up to 3 billion doses if expansion at current sites happens and new suppliers are added, the company said.
The issue of booster shots is open to controversy, given that many of the world's poorer countries are still struggling to source doses for their initial vaccination campaigns. Low rates of vaccination in emerging countries are making them particularly vulnerable to the delta variant of Covid-19, which is over twice as infectious as the initial strain.