The corona boom came to an abrupt end at the biotech company Biontech. In the second quarter, Biontech posted a net loss of a good 190 million euros after a profit of 1.67 billion a year ago. Sales fell to 167.7 million euros from 3.2 billion in the same period last year, as the company announced on Monday. Biontech cited write-downs at its US partner Pfizer on stocks of the Covid vaccine Comirnaty that were expired or about to pass its expiry date. These would have significantly reduced Biontech’s gross profit share from the sale of the vaccine and thus also had a negative impact on sales and profits.
Despite the lower sales, the Mainz-based company still spent a lot of money on research and development. In the second quarter, these costs were a good 373 million euros, just 6.5 percent below the previous year’s level, when Biontech was still bringing in billions in sales thanks to the corona vaccine developed together with Pfizer. But the demand for Covid vaccines collapsed with the end of the pandemic. For some time now, Biontech has therefore been concentrating more on its cancer research, in which the company has its roots, and is pushing ahead with the development of numerous drugs in the pipeline.
“Our goal is to become an approved product line company by investing in our own clinical programs and complementing them with additional drug candidates from our partners,” said CFO Jens Holstein. “Given some uncertainty about revenue, we are also carefully monitoring our expenses by reviewing our cost base.” For the year as a whole, Biontech is therefore only planning research expenditures of 2.0 to 2.2 billion euros instead of 2.4 to 2.6 billion. Holstein is also stepping on the brakes when it comes to capital expenditure, as well as selling and administrative expenses.
For this year, Biontech continues to expect sales of Covid vaccines to be around five (2022: 17.3) billion euros – in the first half of the year it was only 1.4 billion. However, the company has long been anticipating seasonal demand for vaccinations, which means that the corresponding sales are expected in the second half of the year. Biontech only received 1.05 billion euros from Pfizer in July, and the companies also received payments of almost 438 million euros in August as a result of the amended supply contract with the European Union. For the coming cold season, Biontech plans to launch a variant-adapted Covid vaccine in September.