BioNTech beats Q1 estimates despite steep decline in COVID vaccine sales

08 May 2023
firstwordpharma.com
VaccineASCOImmunotherapyFinancial StatementmRNA
BioNTech reported Monday that it generated sales of €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) in the first quarter, down sharply from the €6.4 billion ($7.1 billion) logged during the same time last year, although the performance still came in ahead of the €1.1 billion ($1.1 billion) analysts were expecting. The drop was due to revenues from its Pfizer-partnered COVID-19 vaccine plunging about 80% during the quarter.
Net profit in the period was €502.2 million ($554.6 million), down from €3.7 billion ($4.1 billion) in the corresponding 2022 period. The company also reiterated its financial forecast for this year, saying it anticipates that its COVID-19 vaccineCOVID-19 vaccine will bring in about €5 billion ($5.5 billion) in revenues, which is down from about €17.2 billion ($19 billion) last year.
Pursuing more diseases
The company's quarterly earnings report comes days after the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was no longer a global health emergency. CEO Ugur Sahin noted that BioNTech is looking to develop products for fighting other infectious diseases and cancer. It also repeated that its R&D budget would be between €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) and €2.6 billion ($2.9 billion) this year, up from €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) in 2022, as it hires scientists and initiates more late-stage trials.
"In the first quarter…we expanded our toolkit of cutting-edge technologies to new modalities and added a novel immune checkpoint inhibitor candidate targeting CTLA-4 and two investigational antibody-drug conjugates to our arsenal against cancer," Sahin said, adding that BioNTech is planning to start its first Phase III trial later this year for the anti-CTLA-4 antibody ONC-392 that it licensed from OncoC4 in March. The study will involve up to 600 non-small-cell lung cancer patients who have progressed after PD-1/PD-L1 treatment. The company also plans to present clinical data on three cancer therapies, including Phase I/II data on ONC-392, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference next month.
Meanwhile, Sahin said BioNTech was also making progress toward advancing a next-generation COVID-19 vaccineCOVID-19 vaccine candidate. An updated booster shot "is expected to lead to increased demand, [but] fewer vaccinations and lower population-wide levels of boosting are anticipated," the company noted. It reiterated that it remains in talks with the EU about deferred or reduced COVID-19 vaccineCOVID-19 vaccine deliveries as it re-negotiates a bulk purchase contract, although it declined comment on the state of discussions on the price to be paid per shot.
Last month, BioNTech also began an early-stage trial for the mRNA vaccine BNT164 against tuberculosis.
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