Pharma giant AstraZeneca sold more than $ 1 billion stake in Modern last year as the COVID-19 vaccine from the upstart biotech firm made headlines.
AstraZeneca quietly revealed in his move February Annual Report, Which said Modern has a large proportion of about $ 1.4 billion in sales, having sold part of its equity portfolio last year.
The British drugmaker did not say how much it dumped its 7.6 percent modern stake, but The Times of London reported The sale was approximately $ 1.2 billion in cash.
AstraZeneca – which developed its coronovirus vaccine with the University of Oxford – first invested $ 240 million in Modern in 2013 and expanded its stake through 2019, the year the Massachusetts-based firm went public at $ 23 a share.
The deal was part of a partnership between the two companies with Messenger RNA to develop drugs that Modern Materials put to work in its coronavirus shot by Modern, AstraZeneca has said.
The value of AstraZeneca’s investment exploded last year, along with Modern’s stock price, which rose more than five times as the company rolled out the second of three COVID-19 shots cleared for use in the US.
Modern expects to sell more than $ 18 billion worth of the vaccine this year, which is on pace to make profit for the first time since its inception in 2010.
AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine has been approved for use in countries such as the UK and Canada, but is not approved in the US like Modern. The UK company Cambridge has resolved to sell the shots during the epidemic to no avail.
Modern shares were down 0.3 percent in Wednesday trading to $ 146.40 as of 9:04 a.m. Wednesday, while AstraZeneca recently rose 0.1 percent to $ 47.79.
With post wires
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