SecondIn fact, companies can do whatever they want with their profits. You can invest in them, buy back your stock, some people pay them as dividends and bonuses to employees and shareholders, others use it to prepare acquisitions. After the manufacturer of the Covid-19 vaccine Comirnaty reported a profit of 1.1 billion euros in the first quarter, BioNTech also faced such choices.
Now the listed company has announced that it will use its profits for research.Not less than one The Mainz-based company hopes to develop a vaccine against malariaDying loudly of disease World Health Organization WHO has more than 400,000 patients each year, two-thirds of which are young children. The company also hopes to establish vaccine production facilities in Africa.
150 million through IPO alone
Exactly how much BioNTech will invest in the development of a malaria vaccine has not yet been announced.Company founder Ugurshahin Just talk about “substantial investment”. But it should help remember the cost of vaccine development so far-and who has mainly paid for it so far. As shown in the figure, the country is a much smaller part. Even if some politicians have other suggestions.
BioNTech was composed of three doctors in Mainz in 2008, including Ugur Sahin and his wife Ozlem Tureck, Founded, and then researched mRNA technology for the treatment of cancer. The company was initially funded by Hexal founders Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann with approximately 150 million euros. Over the years, the founding couple themselves have received more funding: they founded the antibody company Ganymede in 2001 and sold it to a Japanese company for 422 million euros in 2016. In the summer of 2019, BioNTech raised the equivalent of 275 million euros from private investors. The IPO in the fall of 2019 raised another $150 million from investors. There are also many cooperation agreements with other companies. For example, Sanofi transferred 26 million euros in 2015 alone, and the American chemical company Eli Lilly transferred 60 million euros.
A loss of 300 million euros at the end of 2019
All this money is needed for research and takeover of other companies. In the three years before the IPO alone, the company, which had increased its number of employees to 1,300 by the end of 2019, had a pre-tax loss of more than 300 million euros.
And the country?From 2007 to 2013, the Federal Ministry of Research paid a total of 2.9 million euros to Mainz through the Go Bio funding program, with an additional 1.2 million euros for University of MainzProfessor Shaheen and research place. The German Research Foundation funded three special research fields and a graduate school, in which Dr. Shahin also participated. The 432 Cooperative Research Center at the University of Mainz received a total of 17 million euros from DFG. He and his wife are responsible for four of the 39 sub-projects.
The federal government did not transfer to BioNTech the largest sum to date until September 2020: 375 million euros were used to promote the rapid development of clinical research and vaccine production for vaccines required for approval. Exactly how BioNTech used the money did not disclose, but the company purchased the Novartis vaccine factory in Marburg in September, which included 400 skilled workers employed there. In April 2021, after more than half a year of transformation, production can finally start, and the factory should be able to produce more than 1 billion cans per year.
BioNTech has now repaid these funds-and brought a return: of the 1.6 billion euros before tax profit in the first quarter, 514 million euros flowed into the country as taxes.
The result of all these investments: As of the end of July, BioNTech and its production partner Pfizer have delivered approximately 74 million doses of vaccine to Germany, which is three-quarters of all vaccines vaccinated in Germany so far. Price per dose: 15.50 euros.
