DOI: 10.15139/s3/dicch0
title: Novavax Historical Data

description: Novavax has a volatile chart and while I don’t usually recommend buying stocks this big (as higher multiples limit profit), here I might make an exception. The drug maker’s shares tumbled 26.1% in the premarket following a Politico report saying it was having trouble meeting Food and Drug Administration quality standards for its Covid-19 vaccine. With AZ wearing out in the UK and in other places, Novavax once they figure out their manufacturing and logistics could be an important global provider. It’s also based on tech that’s old and that people trust. The ticker is $NVAX and I think it could double if for a long hold. I would only buy this at $120 or less, it’s at $145 at the time of writing. Basically the play here is if you think everyone will need a booster shot which with AZ at least appears to be the case. They got a Billion in funding from Project Warpspeed which means they have a lot riding on this vaccine. Politico reported it faces significant hurdles in proving it can manufacture a shot that meets regulators' quality standards, citing three people with direct knowledge of the company's problems. It appears most likely that those difficulties would be temporary so the play here would be to hold for at least the three to six months range. The Politico article is quite sensational. It argues the U.S. and the world made a huge bet on Novavax, but manufacturing problems are jeopardizing billions of doses earmarked for poor and middle-income countries. Novavax’s price peaked at $315 in February, 2021 and then again at $270 in September, 2021. So anything around the $150 price is not actually that bad if you think it can run again. It is risky but the U.S. and the world have too much riding on Novavax to let it fail. Like the Alibaba buy the dip play, it just seems destined to go back up eventually when it meets its mission statement. And it has made a lot of promises, through oddly without a major partner and relative high short volume based on short interest API. The world’s vaccine distributor has been counting on U.S. companies to provide more than 2 billion doses to lower and middle-income countries by the end of 2022 — a crucial step in ending the Covid-19 pandemic. But the campaign run by the international consortium known as COVAX, which has already been delayed significantly because of production lags, is now likely to fall short by more than 1 billion doses as a key supplier faces significant hurdles in proving it can manufacture a shot that meets regulators’ quality standards, according to three people with direct knowledge of the company’s problems. The report said Novavax's difficulties are more concerning than the analytics and testing issues disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Novavax told Politico that it still plans on filing for emergency use authorization by the end of the year and will fulfill all its committed doses both in the U.S. and globally. It’s not a sure bet however that Novavax will be able to critically meet its deadlines. However if you’ve been monitoring what’s going on in the UK, AZ has been a complete failure in that its efficacy has declined rather rapidly where breakthough cases are nearly the norm. Incredibly this week, the United Kingdom is recording close to 50,000 new Covid cases a day — giving it one of the worst daily infection rates in the world. So AZ can save your life but not necessarily prevent you from getting long covid syndrome. “What’s happening is ... this real world experiment where the efficacy of AstraZeneca is decreasing, and they haven’t rolled out their boosters,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a former White House health policy director. This suggests Boosters for everyone is definatley coming in late 2021 or early 2022. This means Novavax will have the entire world depending upon it. The reality is many vaccines begin to wane after 5 months and steadily go down every week after that. The U.K.’s early vaccination rollout began in December 2020 and was one of the first in the world. Now, however, it is seen as contributing to its high case rate, due to an increasing body of data that shows immunity in vaccinated people wanes after about six months. MRNA vaccines like Moderna with a higher load might last considerably longer. The U.S. government invested $1.6 billion in Novavax in 2020 — the most it devoted to any vaccine maker at the time — in hopes that it would offer the world another option for a safe and effective vaccine to help protect against Covid-19. If it has to give it more money, I think it actually will. The company however has had issues with the methods it used to test the purity of the vaccine have fallen short of regulators’ standards and the company has not been able to prove that it can produce a shot that is consistently up to snuff, according to multiple people familiar with Novavax’s difficulties. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive company conversations. Novavax in its history has never crossed the finish line with a Vaccine. Let’s not underestimate the severity of the leak though in the company’s operations. Although Novavax recently attested to some of its analytics and testing issues in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company’s issues are more concerning than previously understood, according to two of the people with direct knowledge of the matter. This is therefore a rather risky buy the dip play, but with significant upside if they find solutions to their bottlenecks. I would not BUY this stock at their current levels, but only if it dips considerably more. That’s just my opinion, always do your own due diligence.