By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Novavax (NASDAQ:NVAX) stock surged 6.4% Tuesday after the company said its 2022 revenue will be around at least fourfold higher compared to a year ago, finally addressing concerns around the marketability of its COVID-19 vaccine.
The company has also developed an Omicron-specific vaccine and said it should begin manufacturing the doses by March-end.
The company is now guiding for annual revenue of $4 billion-$5 billion, up from $1.1 billion in 2021. A big chunk of the revenue will be through vaccine product sales, the company said. Novavax said it is keeping the second half of the year to pursue the full approval of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Held back due to manufacturing issues, Novavax was late by more than a year in bringing its COVID-19 vaccine to the market and filed with the FDA for emergency use authorization only late January.
The company had earlier forecast to deliver 2 billion COVID-19 shots around the world in 2022 but was silent Monday on the quantity it expects to hand over in the current quarter, Reuters said.
According to the news agency, the company has completed delivery of around 9 million vaccine doses to Indonesia, 6 million to Australia, 2 million to South Korea, and expects to supply 69 million doses to Europe in the first half of this year.
Revenue in the fourth quarter fell 20% to $222 million owing to much higher grants received from the U.S. government and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations for its Covid vaccine in the same period last year. The Coalition is a global partnership to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics.
Royalty receipts rose in the fourth quarter as license partners in South Korea and Indonesia booked revenue from sales of the vaccine.
Adjusted net loss per share was $11.18 and worse than estimated, as expenses on research and development (R&D) and general and administrative (G&A) purposes more than doubled.