08.07.2020 Novavax Daily Analysis

08.07.2020 Novavax Daily Analysis

With the Tuesday morning announcement of a $1.6 billion dollar investment from the White House's Operation Warp Speed COVID-19 vaccine accelerator, Novavax (NASDAQ:NVAX) stock skyrocketed more than 30%. Under the terms of the investment by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Novavax will move forward with its clinical development and mass-scale manufacturing of vaccine components, with the dual goals of initiating phase 3 trials in the fall of this year while concurrently producing 100 million vaccine doses by early next year. These goals are extremely ambitious, but now the company has a huge vote of confidence from the government, which ostensibly has the most detailed information about the prospects of all of the COVID-19 vaccines in development. In fact, Novavax's funding from the federal government is significantly larger than any other award disbursed by Operation Warp Speed so far, with the runner up being Oxford University and AstraZeneca's (NYSE:AZN) $1.2 billion. This puts Novavax's vaccine project on equal or better footing compared to many of its larger and more established competitors in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine.