One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, they produce innovative medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.
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For those of that are holding Merck shares, will we be getting Organon shares as a result of it’s spin off from Merck?
Thanks
Up 8% pre-market. Looks like they have the first effective oral antiviral for Covid. Obviously you should still get vaccinated.
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Impressive, very nice.
Medically this is wonderful news, no ifs, no buts.
Financially I’m a little more cautious. $1.2 billion revenue for 1.7 million courses, with availability of 10m by EOY, is not to be sniffed at. This will have a great short-term impact on the bottom line. But even assuming they’ve got a decisive advantage over all other competition (which is a bold assumption in and of itself, one that I don’t personally make), and even assuming it doesn’t run into snags the way the AstraZeneca vaccine did at the start in some countries, the question is how other governments will view the cost-effectiveness of this drug in each potential use-case.
For countries operating on an elimination strategy, they won’t need that much of it.
For countries taking the view that we shouldn’t reintroduce restrictions regardless, and we need to learn to live with covid, the question is whether they’re interested in investing in this, and if so who would get it (I make that statement from a financial perspective - the rhetorical question is how many courses such a government would buy).
For countries with a more middle-of-the-road approach, will they buy big, or will they drip-feed their orders?
Financially of more interest to me is the effectiveness on flu, and how much this actually costs them to produce (because while $700 a course is proportionate for some groups for Covid, I think it’s more than the market would bear as a mass-market equivalent for flu). That will determine the long-term effect on the bottom line.
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Approval granted for a COVID-19 treatment in the UK.
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