ARTICLE: 10 reasons why Novavax has the best Covid-19 vaccine, and its stock has the most upside
Hi everyone,
Here is a partial draft of an article I'm writing about Novavax. I welcome any feedback. If you think anything important is missing, I'd love to hear it. Likewise, if you see anything that isn't clear or is factually incorrect, please post a reply and let me know. I haven't edited it for spelling or grammar yet, so don't worry about corrections of those. It doesn't have an introduction or conclusion yet, and the section on valuation isn't done etc. So I have more writing to do. But it would be good to know what you think overall - if it so far is good, very good, weak or something else.
10 WAYS IN WHICH NOVAVAX HAS THE BEST VACCINE
Novavax has the best Covid vaccine in the following ways:
1) The highest efficacy against the original covid strain: 96%
2) The highest efficacy against the UK variant
3) The highest efficacy against the South Africa variant: NVAX had 60% while J n J was a little lower and Astrazeneca was far lower at only 20%
4) It is probably going to have the strongest durability. Durability means how long protection lasts for. In other words, what the efficacy is after 6 months, 8 months, 10 months and 12 months. Most of the results we’ve seen so far from vaccines have only measured efficacy in the first 1 to 3 months. Normally a vaccine trial measures efficacy over the course of numerous months, because a vaccine that gives protection for only 2 to 4 months is a terrible vaccine. Usually trials have smaller numbers of participants than the 15,000 to 30,000 trials being done for covid; and the trials last for 5 to 12 months.
With covid, the trials have been larger which produces statistically significant numbers in less time, but the problem is that they haven’t yet given us measures of durability. The most important and most proven determinant of durability is the level of antibodies. Antibodies typically have a half life of about a month, meaning they pretty rapidly decline. A level of 800 becomes about 100 by the end of the 3rd month of decline and 50 by the end of the 4th month. The difference between levels of 800 and 100 or 50 is massive.
The Novavax vaccine has far higher levels of antibodies than other vaccines, roughly 600% higher than the next best vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer. So it will probably have greater durability.
Novavax hasn’t released exact numbers yet, but I’m pretty sure that the number of months that patients were in its trial were much longer than the other OWS phase 3 trials. This is partly because its trial had 15,000 people while the others had 30,000 to 45,000. That means that NVAX had to wait for more months for cases to occur.
Another reason is that most of the cases in the NVAX trial occurred in the last 45 days when some decline in antibody levels had already occurred. This is because case counts in the UK were very low in the first 4 months of the trial, and then dramatically spiked in the last 45 days. The spike partly due to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons, partly due to the colder weather and partly due to the more contagious UK variant.
By that time, many of the participants were already in months 3, 4 and 5 and their antibody levels had already declined. Yet it still had better efficacy than any other vaccine.
By contrast, a recent study came out measuring how well the Pfizer vaccine performed for a larger number of people, and it was only about 81% effective, a lot lower than the 94% in its trial. Some of this was likely due to the durability factor and some of it was likely due to some of the people having the UK variant.
When longer periods of 6 to 12 months are measured, we might find out that the RNA vaccines are only 50% or 60% effective. We are still in very early days in terms of measuring that key metric.
In fact, even at the 6 month mark, NVAX patients have antibody levels that are as high as the peak levels of the other vaccines.
5) The only vaccine to show efficacy against both the UK variant and the South Africa variant. In general one of the major strengths of Novavax’s technology is that it provides cross-protection against “drifted” strains and mutations. In addition to being demonstrated by its covid vaccine, this was clearly shown by its flu vaccine that beat the leading flu vaccine in 3 separate head-to-head trials.
6) Tied for best in distribution and storage requirements, requiring only the normal refrigeration that pharmacies, doctors offices and hospitals already have
7) At least tied for best with the RNA vaccines at being able to be used for booster shots. The viral vector adenovirus vaccines are in last place because they have a bad track record of being effective in booster shots. The NVAX vaccine could be considered better than the RNA vaccines on this front at this point in time because protein subunit vaccines like the NVAX kind have a strong track record of being used as booster shots. The RNA vaccines have a good probability at being effective at being used for booster shots, but the technology is brand new so they don’t have an existing track record. In a nutshell, protein subunits = proven record, RNA = no record and adenovirus = poor track record.
8) The only vaccine using a technology with a proven track record of being able to make annual multi-valent vaccines with 3 to 4 strains in a single dose. It’s very iffy whether the RNA vaccines will be able to fit two strains in one dose because they are already using a high amount of antigen in their single strain shots, and patients are already having more pain, fatigue and fever as a result of the high antigen levels than the NVAX patients are having. Because NVAX using an adjuvant to boost the impact of the antigen, its shot uses about 60% to 80% less antigen than the RNA vaccines use. This is why we know for sure that NVAX can fit as many as 4 strains into a single shot - just like they do with their flu shot.
9) According to Bill Gates and other vaccine leaders, Novavax is tied for first with the adenovirus vaccines for being the cheapest to produce per dose. It is why his foundation and other vaccine nonprofits like CEPI have put most of their funding into Novavax, Astrazeneca and J n J. The efficacy of the NVAX vaccine is a lot better than the adenovirus vaccines. Plus the adeno vaccines have trouble acting as boosters. So though they are price competitive with NVAX, they are weak compared to NVAX in crucial areas.
10) Tied for the lead in manufacturing capacity, slated to reach 2 billion per year by mid-2021 and about 2.4 billion by the end of the year. This is 1 billion in Europe, 1 billion in India, and about .4 billion between the US, Japan, South Korea etc. I think that within several months, Novavax increase this heavily increase this capacity and will take a clear lead in manufacturing capacity for three important reasons:
A) manufacturers will want to produce the best vaccine for monetary reasons;
B) governments will want their country to produce the best vaccine for health reasons. In many countries, the government even before covid was already involved in funding and overseeing domestic manufacturing of vaccines to ensure protection and health security of their people. With covid, more and more countries are taking this approach and putting serious money into boosting domestic manufacturing.
C) other manufacturers have more available capacity for protein subunit vaccines because the NVAX vaccine is the only successful one of that type. Astrazeneca, JnJ, Cansino and Gameleya use the same technology, so they are competing for available capacity from other companies with existing adenovirus capacity. Pfizer and Moderna both are competing for available capacity from companies with RNA capacity, and Curevac may be competing with them soon too.
Sanofi, a major vaccine company, has so far failed in its attempt to produce a protein subunit covid vaccine, and the window has pretty much closed for it to be able to run a phase 3. So they are turning to making money by manufacturing doses for other companies. But its focus is not RNA technology, so it can only do 100 million doses per year of the RNA vaccines. By comparison, it had capacity to be able to make 1 billion doses of a protein vaccine. I think probably most or all of that capacity will be used to make the NVAX protein vaccine.
NVAX has the perfect storm of protein vaccine technology having more pre-existing manufacturing capacity due to its proven history than RNA has capacity … yet it currently has no real competition for that capacity.
THE BEST VALUATION AND MOST UPSIDE
While Novavax has the best vaccine in a host of important ways, its valuation is actually a lot lower than the other vaccine companies.
Note: more details and analysis to come … including potential revenue numbers from 2 billion, 3 billion and 4 billon doses per year ... that give the stock the potential to increase another 500% if annual shots are needed, which experts are saying will probably be the case.
CATALYSTS:
In addition to being undervalued, Novavax has a plethora of catalysts that are due to take place in the coming weeks and months. In fact, NVAX has more catalysts coming up than I’ve ever seen for any stock I’ve owned. The catalysts include:
* Every time a prominent country approves the vaccine. There will be global media coverage when the UK, Canada, Japan, the EU and the US approve the vaccine. That’s 5 catalysts. There will be domestic coverage each time its approved in less prominent countries.
* Every time a major prominent rolls out the vaccine. Another 5 catalysts plus domestic news coverage.
* Every time a new purchase order is announced for a country. Even when deals are signed to supply 10 million doses to a smaller country like Israel, the US media covers it. This could be 10 to 20 catalysts.
* Every time a new manufacturing partnership is announced. This will probably be between 2 and 5 catalysts.
* Every time Novavax announces a new development in its covid pipeline. This includes: a) announcing they’ve developed a booster shot for the UK or South Africa variant; b) announcing they’ve developed a bi-valent and/or tri-valent vaccine for 2 to 3 strains; c) starting the first trial of A and or B; d) results of the first trial; e) many other announcements as those things progress. f) all of the same things for their combined flu-covid vaccine.
