BofA Downgrades CureVac On Limited 2022 Prospects

There is limited upside from CureVac BV’s CVAC COVID-19 vaccine and there are few catalysts from the rest of the company’s pipeline in 2022, according to BofA Securities.

The CureVac Analyst: Geoff Meacham downgraded the rating for CureVac from Neutral to Underperform, while reducing the price target from $55 to $20.

The CureVac Thesis: The global market is already being served by existing vaccines, boosters, antibodies and oral antivirals, and there seem to be “minimal vaccine market opportunities left for CureVac,” Meacham said in the downgrade note.

“Furthermore, with recent underperformance on many C-19 vaccine makers, we think investors have started to move on from C-19 vaccine trades,” he added.

“We’ve long held the belief CureVac would benefit from more de-risking of its non-C-19 pipeline; however, development of these programs has been slower, taking a back seat to CVnCoV and CV2CoV. With this in mind, we don’t think incremental updates from CV8102 or initiation of clinical studies for the flu vaccine provide enough pipeline de-risking to drive meaningful upside,” the analyst further wrote.

CVAC Price Action: Shares of CureVac had declined by 12.84% to $19.05 at the time of publication Friday morning.