The race to develop the first Covid-19 vaccines has been decided. The battle for market share is just beginning.
Regulators in the U.K. have authorized Pfizer and BioNTech ’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, and U.S. regulators are scheduled to complete their own review as soon as late next week. U.S. vaccinations should begin shortly afterward, and regulators will likely authorize Moderna ’s vaccine before Christmas.
Both vaccines have been shown to be more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in late stage clinical trials, which raises the bar that future candidates will need to meet. A vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca has shown far less impressive results. Investors have voted with their wallets: BioNTech’s New York-traded shares have rallied more than 30% over the past month, while Moderna’s stock has more than doubled over that same period.
That reaction makes some sense: After all, initial doses will be sold directly to governments at fixed prices, which means that huge profits are likely next year. And the success of the vaccine programs bodes well for other treatments the companies are developing that rely on similar technology.
Still, investors expecting that these two companies will dominate this huge market indefinitely are getting ahead of themselves. Key questions about the long-run value of each vaccine program are yet to be resolved.
