AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Wins First Approval From UK; Shares Rise

AstraZeneca will start to supply the UK with its COVID-19 vaccine after the country was first to approve its emergency use. Shares rose 2.3% in Wednesday’s pre-market trading.

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AstraZeneca (AZN) said it expects vaccinations to begin early in the New Year and is gearing up to supply millions of doses in the first quarter of 2021, as part of an agreement with the UK government to supply up to a total of 100 million doses.

Specifically, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has cleared the authorization for emergency supply of the COVID-19 vaccine for the immunisation of individuals aged 18 years and older. The authorization recommends the administration of two doses with an interval of between four and 12 weeks. This regimen was shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, with no severe cases and no hospitalisations more than 14 days after the second dose.

“Today is an important day for millions of people in the UK who will get access to this new vaccine. It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit,” said AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot.

AstraZeneca said that the MHRA’s decision was based on independent advice from its Commission on Human Medicines following a rolling review of trial data that included an interim analysis of the Phase 3 programme led by the University of Oxford. In addition to the programme led by Oxford University, AstraZeneca is conducting a large trial in the US and globally. In total, Oxford University and AstraZeneca expect to enroll up to 60,000 participants globally.

The drugmaker is also seeking emergency use listing from the World Health Organization to fast-track the availability of the vaccine in low- and middle-income countries.

On a global basis, AstraZeneca is targeting manufacturing capacity of up to three billion doses of the vaccine in 2021 on a rolling basis, pending regulatory approvals.

AZN shares have dropped 9.5% over the past three months and are now little changed since the start of the year. (See AstraZeneca stock analysis on TipRanks). That’s with a Strong Buy analyst consensus backed by 5 Buy ratings versus only 1 Hold rating.

What’s more, the average analyst price target stands at $67.50, which puts the upside potential at a promising 35% in the coming 12 months.

Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Purcell upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold and selected AZN as their preferred large-cap growth stock across the European biopharma sector, citing the drugmaker’s oncology pipeline as catalysts, in particular the strength of cancer drugs Calquence and Farxiga.

Purcell expects AstraZeneca to post 9% sales growth and 19% earnings per share (EPS) growth over the next five years, “reflecting the depth of the organic pipeline and the importance of revenue diversification over the coming years.”