Starting this thread as a means to discuss AZN’s earnings.
AZN is a Pharma giant who’s stock has lived in the 40s-60s for the past 2 years. Pretty steady.
They have 160 products in their pipeline currently which should prove to be positive for guidance. They have an established track record of product approvals- and they continue to innovate.
Not to mention how successful they have been with COVID 19 and various therapies. COVID 19 has been such a money making machine for them- they have decided to dedicate an entire new department to vaccine and vaccine research. This news just came out a day or so ago-This could go both ways for guidance. They could be dropping this as a means to bolster poor guidance- or generate positive buzz for a successful earnings… Vaccines are not one of their core products but COVID is not going anywhere and they know it. It will continue to be a big money generator if they can capitalize on it.
I don’t have any positions- but I do think they will have good earnings and guidance. Curious to hear anyone else’s thoughts.
I’ll be honest, I do not know much about pharma so please take my analysis with a grain of salt but I’m seeing an upcoming downtrend if you look at MACD and RSI.
Thanks for this- I probably know less about charting/trends than you do about Pharma. So this is appreciated.
Pharma is tricky- but AstraZeneca is not going anywhere for a long time. So I don’t think this really swings big in either direction.
Regardless I’m really bullish on their plan to focus on vaccination. They also received the first step in Australia for a Covid antibody therapy. Basically a treatment for Covid other than the vaccine. The same cocktail is being reviewed by FDA for EUA and same in Europe.
They’ll make sure they bring this up during earnings I’m sure.
To expand a bit on the expansion of their business model via vaccines.
When you get to be the size of an AstraZeneca you get there by being good at what you’re good at. AZN has a lot of products dedicated to Oncology, Cardiovascular, Respiratory etc. Thats their bread and butter.
Covid threw everyone a curveball- and AZN did what they were good at and tapped into their tech to develop this cocktail of antibodies (Covid is a respiratory virus after all).
Is it typical that a company that hasn’t dabbled in vaccines up and develops an entire division supporting them? No- but AZN has SOME framework built into to their company via their already established pipeline of products.
As I mentioned COVID is already a huge business and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future- so I think the development of this department for them is a good “gamble”.
Regarding the opening of a new vaccines division, I’m not really a pharma expert but this would typically mean either a bunch of acquisitions incoming, or a very long term payoff.
Using this as a study break, but this is my 2 cents for now. AZN has a fairly efficacious vaccine compared to competitors and they also have other products like the antibody cocktail shot that has shown great efficacy in treating covid-19. I have 14 shares of AZN that I got during the covid dip that I wanted to hold long term. I think the company is well run and I had my eye on it before covid, covid was the push I needed to purchase some shares.
non covid related opinion - I think a lot of the research they are doing in different areas is great and they will continually have products in the pipeline for various diseases. specifically I liked the oncology research before covid and the immuno-therapies they are working on for various cancers.
Earnings opinion - for me I’m going to hold the shares I own long on this company so it wont matter I don’t think ill play earnings on options. I think earnings should be good considering all the good news coming out about the covid antibody cocktail and their vaccine skipping EUA approval and going straight for FDA approval. The company should stand to make good revenue from those products once approved. I also don’t think covid hyper inflated this stock as much as others like MRNA and NVAX. precovid AZN was sitting around 51$ a share, trading only 23.5% higher now. If I were to play options on their earnings I would probably get ATM for jan 2022 and hold through the end of the year in hopes of FDA approval boosts. I don’t see them tanking on earnings too much if at all.
Let me know thoughts and constructive feedback as always.
how would you compare this to MRNA? They forecasted a huge drop in rev due to covid winding down, but your thesis states COVID is going no where, thus they’ll have that money for a while.
covid is going nowhere. people will continue to get sick with covid vaccinated or unvaccinated. there will also be mutant forms of covid, just like how the flu mutates every year, down the line. so as far as that goes the need for their products will still exist. I don’t think MRNA revenue drop had to do with covid disappearing and more to do with other companies with vaccines also getting their share of the pie.
So Moderna is a vaccine company- their focus was/is on the mRNA delivery system to target viruses before Covid.
So I think they benefitted greatly from COVID for obvious reasons-right place right time. For example Q3 of 2021 they did 5 billion in revenue- compared to 157 million in 2020.
mRNA is still a relatively new way to deliver vaccines to combat viruses. Before Covid there really wasn’t a broad adoption of the technology. I think that’s why you saw a huge run up with them because they were one of the companies that had a history with mRNA. Not to mention the “meme” hype also.
In terms of their forecast- Pfizer has taken the lead here due to having their vaccine approved for kids also. I’m sure Moderna will be soon as well- but no one really knows how many boosters or how frequently we’ll need to get jabbed.
Coupling that with the fact that they are solely a vaccine company- might be why their Q3 didn’t “look” great. But comparing that to last year- they are still way up.
I don’t know if that answers your question- but Moderna and AZN are really two different companies.