Did Curevac’s top management play with the stock of the vaccine-flop company?
Pierluigi Mennitti's article on the stock maneuvers of the board of directors of CureVac, the German vaccine company that proved to be ineffective in the trial phase
In the end, Curevac's was not a success story. The vaccine ran aground in the testing phase, its effectiveness against Covid stopped just below 50%, a percentage too low compared to the fastest competitors and a cold shower for all those who participated in the project.
But now news is emerging that brings the Tübingen company back to the fore. According to what has been revealed by BusinessInsider.de and resumed secondarily by Handelsblatt , the 4 members of the board of directors of Curevac would have sold again in June most of the shares in their possession for a value of 39 million dollars (32 million euros) . Since August 2020 Curevac has been listed on the US stock exchange and the proof would be in the documents that the company presented on June 21 to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, the control commission of the US stock exchange.
Based on additional sources, such as the 2020 annual report delivered by Curevac on April 21, 2021 also to the SEC, BusinessInsider also provided further details on the board members. Company co-founder Florian von der Mülbe, who still held 1.16 million shares last April, had sold almost half of them by June: around 500,000, 46%, earning 33.7 million shares. dollars, despite their course having already practically halved compared to the beginnings, following the difficulties and delays that the Curevac vaccine was encountering. Von der Mülbe was chief operating officer until June 30, his departure was surprising.
Current Head of Finance Pierre Kemula got rid of 33,000 shares (93%) for $ 2.1 million. Development director Ulrike Gnad-Vogt and technology manager Mariola Fortin-Mleczek have put 99% of their shares up for sale: approximately 22,500 each for a gain of $ 1.4 million.
"What leaps to the eye is that all board members have put up almost all of the Curevac shares they hold for sale," Handelsblatt noted, "and although the regular sale of company shares on the part of members of his board of directors is a custom, but less so is that of a sale of this size, a bad signal sent to the markets ”.
It is not possible to trace the exact date of the sale of the shares from the documents submitted to the SEC. Handelsblatt traces the succession of events. On the evening of June 16, Curevac announces the partial results of the trial, according to which the anti-Covid vaccine would reach an efficacy of 47%. On June 17, the shares of the Tübingen company fell by 40%, from 90 to 60 dollars. Until 21 June, the shares still touch a high of 68 dollars. Board members sold their shares for an average price of $ 62. On June 30, Curevac's final report confirms the disappointing partial data disclosed two weeks earlier. A new fall in the stock market follows. Curevac currently has a market capitalization of € 9.2 billion, in the United States the stock is worth $ 58.70, less than half its high of $ 127.53 reached at the end of April.
The company has issued a statement denying any link between the sale of the shares and Curevac's prospect and future development and ensures that no action has changed hands prior to the publication of the offending efficacy data.
The European Commission had entered into a contract for 225 million doses of the vaccine if authorized by the EMA. Curevac still hopes for a green light for the under-60s, among whom the effectiveness rises (so to speak) to 53%: at the expected cost of 10 euros per dose, the contract would still be able to save the company's accounts, but that would indeed be a gamble given the abundance of other much more effective vaccines. The German government itself, which owns 16% of Curevac's shares, has effectively removed the Tübingen vaccine from every vaccination plan in the coming months. Only a year and a half ago the prospects were completely different, Curevac seemed to be in the front row in the vaccine race, so much so that the United States had tried to secure a contract for the exclusive administration of the potential vaccine, a maneuver then stopped by the main shareholder of Curevac and the intervention of the Berlin government.
Today the company diplomatically assures that the entire board of directors "is convinced of the technology and is energetically invested in the further development of the company". But as things stand, there is rather the sale of almost all the shares owned by its four executives.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/curevac-azioni-vertici-societa/ on Wed, 14 Jul 2021 10:21:38 +0000.