Moderna Vaccine Unlikely to Revive U.S. Economy, Survey Says
Moderna Vaccine Unlikely to Revive U.S. Economy, Survey Says
(Bloomberg) -- Investors think Moderna Inc.’s experimental Covid-19 inoculation wouldn’t be enough to unlock the economy, an Evercore ISI survey showed.
The survey of over 100 investors -- more than half of whom specialize in health care -- found there’s a 43% probability that Moderna’s vaccine would be sufficient to set the U.S. economy aright, analyst Joshua Schimmer wrote in a note. Still, a majority expect the next update on mRNA-1273 will be positive and predicted emergency use authorization will be granted in the fourth quarter and regulatory approval in 2021.
Investors pegged the probability at 70% that a better potential vaccine emerges within the next year. There’s no shortage of candidates with at least 10 kicking off human testing and more than 100 others in earlier stages of development, according to World Health Organization estimates. In the near-term, heavy-hitter Pfizer Inc. and its Mainz, Germany-based partner BioNTech SE are expected to have their first results, as is Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Criticism of the first look at Moderna’s vaccine data has been mounting and pessimism about the potential for a broadly used vaccine has tamped down some of the more heady stock gains among companies racing to stymie the spread of Covid-19. As less sophisticated investors propped up Moderna’s stock it became the least profitable short in all of biotech, according to S3 Partners data showing investors lost $1.14 billion through last week.
Love to Hate
Less than a third of respondents said they held a notable position in Covid-19 stocks in their portfolios.
Evercore’s survey confirmed that Moderna is the stock specialists love to hate right now with 38 naming it their top short. Second place went to Inovio with eight votes, and Novavax Inc. came in third with six. Novavax, which has rallied more than 1,000% this year, kicked off human testing on Monday. Still 12 investors also picked Moderna as their top long, while BioNTech, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer all had six or more votes apiece.
And now as the country slowly starts to reopen and the pace of the pandemic eases in some key hotspots, a new concern is emerging, if patients in vaccine trials can be exposed to the virus fast enough to see results.
So far that’s not stopping new studies from starting or some investors from stepping in. Dynavax Technologies, which is expected to begin a trial this summer, jumped after Bain Capital bought 1 million shares. Optimistic commentary from partner Sinovac Biotech Ltd. added to a Dynavax stock, which rose as much as 37% on Friday
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.