For what the company from Mainz has achieved, the word “extraordinary” seems almost modest. “Looking back, 2021 was an extraordinary year”: This is how Biontech co-founder and CEO Uğur Şahin describes the past financial year. And the phrase “in retrospect” shows that they may have hoped for Mainz, but probably didn’t expect at the beginning of that year how extraordinary it would be. Biontech had raised the forecast several times.
In January 2021, the Comirnaty vaccine developed by Biontech against the corona virus had only been approved in the USA, in Europe and some others for a few days – be it conditionally or as an emergency product. The impact that Biontech and its partner Pfizer have had on health and the economy in 2021 is of historic importance. “The distribution of our vaccine has probably saved millions of lives and is helping people all over the world to find their way back to a more normal life,” Sahin said later in an Internet conference for investors.
According to their own statements, by the beginning of March 2022, Biontech and Pfizer had shipped more than 3.1 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, of which around 1.3 billion doses went to low- and middle-income countries. The subordinate clause is deliberately set like this, because the criticism of the manufacturers is as old as the vaccines, saying that so far it has been mainly wealthy countries that have benefited from the Covid vaccines, not just from Comirnaty. According to surveys by the data service Our World in Data, only 14.5 percent of the population in low-income countries have received at least one dose. In the United States, for example, this rate is now almost 77 percent. For the year 2022, Biontech and Pfizer have signed for around 2.4 billion doses by mid-March. Talks about further deliveries were ongoing, it was said on Wednesday.
Özlem Türeci, co-founder of Biontech, in her laboratory.
(Photo: Biontech/dpa)
For the coming year, Biontech expects Covid-19 vaccine sales of 13 to 17 billion euros. The proportion of deliveries to countries with middle and low incomes should increase, explained CFO Jens Holstein at the investor conference. Since the price there is based on the income level or the vaccine is delivered at a non-profitable price, the group’s average price falls. The company is also looking for a vaccine against the omicron variant of the coronavirus. Biontech started producing an omicron-based vaccine at its own risk. It announces the first data of the clinical study for April.
In figures, the extraordinary year reads like this: In 2021, Biontech had a turnover of almost 19 billion euros, almost all of which came from vaccine sales. In 2020, Biontech bet a good 480 million euros. Biontech estimates profit before taxes for 2021 at around 15 billion euros. In the previous year there was a loss of 146 million euros. The net profit was 10.3 billion euros in 2021 after a good 15 million in 2020.
Biontech Group wants to put this money into research and accelerate programs in infectious diseases and oncology. The company wants to meet its global social responsibility for health and democratize access to cutting-edge medicine, Şahin said in the afternoon.
And the shareholders should also benefit from the “extraordinary year”. The group wants to buy back shares for up to $1.5 billion over the next two years, and for the first time shareholders are to receive a “special dividend”: two euros per share certificate and “special” because it was a special year. Based on the shares outstanding at the end of March, that would total around 486 million euros. The pharmaceutical entrepreneurs Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann, who hold almost half of the capital through their investment company, benefit the most.
Although the Nasdaq-listed stock is far from its highs, it rose on Wednesday.
The figures for the year as a whole emerged from quarter to quarter. In the first three months of 2021, the company had a turnover of a good two billion euros, in the second quarter it was already 5.3 billion euros, in the third 6.1 billion euros and in the fourth 5.5 billion. The vaccine is a booster for the company and growth in Germany. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimated Biontech’s contribution to economic growth from a total of 2.7 percent last year to around half a percentage point. The company contributes around 15 billion euros to the gross domestic product (GDP). Economist Nils Jannsen from the Institute for the World Economy writes in a comment that a single company should increase GDP so much.
And Mainz, where Biontech is based, is particularly pleased. The group pays 4.8 billion euros in income taxes. A large chunk of it should end up in the coffers of the university town.