Valneva Soars as EU to Buy Up to 60 Million Covid Shots

(Bloomberg) -- Valneva SE shares soared after the European Commission agreed to buy as many as 60 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine the French firm is developing.

The deal would allow EU member states to purchase almost 27 million doses from Valneva in 2022, and an additional 33 million in 2023, the commission said in a statement Wednesday. The shot has yet to be approved by the bloc’s medicines regulator.

Valneva, based outside Nantes, is developing a vaccine that uses an inactivated form of the virus to generate an immune response, a technology that’s often used in flu shots and childhood immunizations. Its development has lagged behind messenger-RNA shots developed by Moderna Inc. and the partnership between Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech SE, of which billions of doses have already been used.

Still, Valneva said last month that its vaccine elicited better immunity than AstraZeneca Plc’s shot in a clinical trial. That’s after the U.K. government earlier this year canceled its supply contract, saying the company had breached its obligations, which Valneva contests.

Those fluctuations have sent the shares on a roller-coaster ride. They’re up about 325% over the past 12 months and surged as much as 25% in Paris on Wednesday.

The contract marks the eighth deal the EU has reached with a pharmaceutical company for Covid inoculations.

Delivery of Valneva’s vaccine is currently expected to begin in April, subject to approval by the European Medicines Agency, the company said. A rolling review of the shot is expected to start soon, it added.

“The Valneva vaccine adds another option to our broad portfolio,” Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s commissioner for health and food safety, said in the statement.

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