Forget AstraZeneca’s wobbly share price – vaccines give big pharma investors reasons to be cheerful

Vaccine success could help the industry counter some of the criticism it has faced over drug pricing, even though reform is long overdue, writes James Moore

The holy grail? AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine (Reuters)

The morning after AstraZeneca’s big Covid-19 vaccine announcement saw its  shares recovering a bit from the market’s decidedly churlish reaction to the news concerning its remarkable collaboration with Oxford University. 

The fall on the day was perhaps driven by twitchiness about the numbers (even though there’s more to it than the headline of 70 per cent effectiveness compared to Pfizer’s 90 would imply), perhaps by nerves over how the US authorities might react. It might simply have been because markets always find the journey much more exciting than the arrival. The rule has long been that you buy during the run-up, sell when the announcement comes.

Longer term, there is every reason for those with money invested in the sector to feel optimistic about the prospects of Astra and its peers, even if the former’s investors will have to wait a bit for any vaccine-related payoff as a result of the company’s promise to make it available at cost while the pandemic is raging (which is clearly open to interpretation).