Valneva, the French Covid-19 vaccine maker backed by the UK government, has filed for a US initial public offering seeking to take advantage of investor appetite for biotechnology during the pandemic.
The Paris-listed company, with a market cap of more than €1bn, filed to raise $100m in American Depositary Shares, the day after Vaccitech, the Oxford spinout that owns the platform behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, published its filing.
Valneva has a deal worth up to €1.4bn to supply Covid-19 vaccines to the UK, manufacturing the doses in a Scottish factory expanded with government funds. The UK has already agreed to buy 100m shots and has an option to purchase 90m more by 2025. Valneva has already received almost £100m from the government.
But in its filing, Valneva warned that any restrictions on importing or exporting vaccines out of the EU could have a “substantial” risk to its operation. The vaccine is due to be manufactured in the UK but put into vials and packaged in the EU, it said.
Shortfalls in supply of vaccines to the EU have led to tensions between the UK and the EU over importing shots and raw materials for the current approved jabs from Oxford/AstraZeneca and BioNTech/Pfizer.
Valneva’s filing comes after it announced positive early stage trial results for its Covid-19 earlier this week, planning to launch a later stage study this month and apply for a UK approval in the autumn.
The phase 1 and 2 study showed the shot elicited more antibodies in the participants receiving the highest dose than are usually seen in recovered Covid-19 patients, with over 90 per cent producing significant levels of antibodies. The jab also induced a response from another key part of the immune system, the T-cells.
The vaccine, which uses a whole inactivated virus, a more traditional approach than the currently approved shots, could be used as a booster for the vaccinated or to tackle variants of the virus.
Valneva said even though it would be approved much later, it could have a competitive advantage against its rivals.
“We believe that, if approved, our vaccine, as an inactivated virus vaccine, could offer benefits in terms of safety, cost, ease of manufacture and distribution compared to currently approved vaccines and could be adapted to offer protection against mutations of the virus,” it said in the filing.
But it also said that it did not yet have the rights to use the strain of virus in the vaccine on the commercial market. It is in the process of negotiating a commercial agreement with the World Health Organisation and the Italian National Institute for Infectious Diseases.
Valneva is also developing vaccines for Lyme Disease and chikungunya, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Total revenue was €110m in 2020, down from €126m in 2019, as sales of its travel vaccines were hit by restrictions on travel during the pandemic.
It made a loss of €0.71 per share last year, after it had to make a €7.4m writedown, partly because of the limited shelf life of the products. Valneva also had to renegotiate a debt financing agreement last year as it was at risk of not meeting the minimum revenue covenant.