(Reuters) – The American laboratory Novavax lowered its turnover forecast for 2024 on Tuesday, citing lower than expected sales of its vaccine against COVID-19, for which it will sell the marketing rights to the French group Sanofi.
Novavax shares fell around 4% in pre-market trading.
The vaccine maker now expects sales of its COVID-19 vaccine, its only product on the market, to be between $175 million and $225 million for the full year, down from an estimate previous $275 million to $375 million.
“We were hoping to get a bigger market share this year,” John Jacobs, chief executive of Novavax, said in an interview, adding that the group was lowering its annual forecast “to be conservative.”
Novavax says it now expects total revenue of $650 million to $700 million in 2024, up from $700 million to $800 million previously forecast. The company said earlier this year it expected annual revenue of $1 billion.
Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine generated sales of $38.21 million in the third quarter, which exceeded the $29 million expected by analysts on average, according to LSEG data.
The CEO acknowledged that Novavax did not have the influence and scale of Sanofi, with which he signed a licensing agreement last May for the joint marketing, from 2025, of its non-RNA vaccine. messenger against COVID in several markets, including the United States and Europe.
Novavax has struggled to catch up with rivals Moderna and Pfizer, which reported more than $3 billion in combined sales for their messenger RNA COVID vaccines during the third quarter.
(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove; with contributions from Bhanvi Satija in Bangalore; Diana Mandiá, editing by Kate Entringer)
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