Furioser US-Börsenstart für CureVac

Stand: 15.08.2020 20:10 Uhr

The Corona hopefuls Curevac has made a brilliant debut on the stock market. The stock shot up around 250 percent on the first day of trading on the Nasdaq in New York. The majority owner Dietmar Hopp should be most pleased about this.

A new German stock market star was born in the tranquil university town of Tübingen: the biotech company Curevac celebrated a rocket launch on the US technology exchange Nasdaq. The shares closed at $ 55.90 on their first day of trading, a jump of 249 percent from the issue price. At 16 dollars, this was already at the upper end of the price range.

Advances in the development of the corona vaccine had fueled investor interest. Even at the issue price, CureVac was valued at the equivalent of up to 2.4 billion euros - that is 800 million more a few weeks ago when the German state bank KfW, among others, got involved. The market capitalization is now over seven billion euros.

Raised over $ 200 million
The biotech company, which became famous for its corona vaccine candidate, was able to collect $ 213 million from investors.

The new investors can purchase an additional two million shares in the weeks after the initial listing. This would increase Curevac's revenue to $ 245 million. Majority shareholder Dietmar Hopp, the founder of the software company SAP, has agreed to buy shares for a further 100 million euros at the issue price.

Hope in the fight against Corona
Around $ 150 million of the proceeds are to flow into the development of a corona vaccine. According to the prospectus, the short-term production capacity will be expanded with a further 50 million dollars. Chief Financial Officer Pierre Kemula emphasized that the need for fresh capital was far from being met with the IPO. "We will always look for additional sources of funding," he said on Friday evening. As a biotech company without significant sales, Curevac is used to that. Last year, Curevac posted a loss of almost 100 million euros on sales of around 17.5 million euros.

In the search for a vaccine against Sars-CoV-2, Curevac is one of several bearers of hope worldwide. The company hit the headlines in March because the American government allegedly had an interest in the biotech company. "We were at the center of a political storm," said CFO Kemula. But there was no offer from Trump.

Hopp share drops to 49 percent
The majority owner of Curevac is the biotech holding Dievini of SAP founder Dietmar Hopp. The investor has so far held almost 54 percent of Curevac, and after the IPO it will be a good 49 percent. Next to Hopp, the British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo, Qatar and the federal government are the largest shareholders. Most recently, the German state bank KfW had acquired shares for 300 million euros. As a result of the IPO, the federal government's stake will drop to 17 percent, GlaxoSmithKline now has a good eight percent.

The second German vaccine hope
Curevac began clinical trials of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate in June. The Tübingen-based company - like Mainz Biotech and the US company Moderna - rely on vaccines based on so-called messenger RNA (mRNA). It is supposed to convey information to human cells about the production of proteins and thus about the fight against pathogens. Both Biontech and Moderna are already listed