(News Bulletin 247) – The company’s share price has risen by more than 40% over a week as concerns grow over the virus, which has been considered a “public health emergency” by the WHO since August 14. The group is preparing to increase its deliveries and production.

When a virus spreads rapidly to the point of becoming a global health concern, investors stock companies specializing in the fight against the virus.

This is what has been happening for several days with the Danish Bavarian Nordic, listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Founded in 1994, this laboratory specializes in vaccines against several diseases, such as rabies, cholera or Japanese encephalitis. Above all, Bavarian is the only pharmaceutical laboratory to have a vaccine approved by the health authorities against the “mpox” virus, also known as “monkeypox” or “monkey pox”.

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Results up sharply in 2023

But last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a public health emergency, triggering its highest level of health alert in the face of a surge in cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a growing number of countries in Africa. A case was also detected in Sweden on August 15, a first in Europe.

On Saturday, Bavarian said it was working with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) to “develop the production capacity of the MPOX vaccine in Africa through technology transfer to selected African manufacturers.” The group informed ACDC that it could currently produce 10 million doses by 2025, in addition to existing contracts, with 2 million doses expected to be delivered as early as 2024.

“We have inventory and capacity. What we lack is orders,” Paul Chaplin, chief executive of Bavarian Nordic, told Bloomberg last week.

On the stock market, its price fell slightly this Monday in Copenhagen with a drop of 3% around 10:45 a.m. But over a week, the share price gained 42%, with a jump of 12.4% on August 14, after the WHO declared a public health emergency. Investors anticipate an increase in activity and therefore revenue for the Danish group with the spread of the virus.

In 2023, Bavarian Nordic’s revenues jumped 124% to DKK 7 billion, or around €940 million, while its gross operating profit (EBITDA) increased almost eightfold. The increase in these results was partly explained by “an extraordinary increase in deliveries of our smallpox and mpox vaccine to governments around the world following the unprecedented mpox outbreak,” the company said at the time.

Bavarian Nordic further illustrates Denmark’s expertise in the pharmaceutical industry. The country is already the birthplace of Novo Nordisk, whose stock has recently been boosted by its diabetes and obesity treatments. The group became the largest European capitalization last year, and is currently worth around 540 billion euros on the stock market, making Novo Nordisk the 14th largest company in the world on the stock market.