I'm curious why the share price slide after the mainstream news.
Sure, there have been rumours about the Lancet paper for a few days, maybe these were priced in already - and AstraZeneca has promised to manufacture it at cost or near cost. Still weird the market reacted this way
Outside of publicity, I don't see this as having an enormous impact on profits. Companies will be compelled to produce the vaccine in any event, and will be compensated, but I can't imagine governments would be purchasing the vaccine for any large markup.
I think it depends on the company, AstraZeneca CEO already said a while ago they will be manufacturing this at cost or near cost, this is a time for big pharma to give back. Some drug companies like Gilead though have very high markup, paid by the taxpayer.
And some bioteh companies with mRNA vaccines in phase 1/2 trials like Moderna and Biontech, or protein treatment like Synairgen have seen share prices skyrocket.
I guess the assumption is they will be collecting fees from the IP and/or future contracts for other drugs if this works out.
The problem is that this is a money-losing proposition. If ten companies attempt to produce a vaccine, spending X, and two of them succeed (before the rest), with the government paying each double their development costs (2X), that means that the expected outcome of developing a vaccine is -0.6X.
As a result, we should expect that most companies will only make a token effort.
Sure, there have been rumours about the Lancet paper for a few days, maybe these were priced in already - and AstraZeneca has promised to manufacture it at cost or near cost. Still weird the market reacted this way
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/astrazeneca-...