SK Bioscience is promoting a stake in US vaccine developer Novavax

SK Bioscience Co., the drug-making arm of South Korea’s No. 2 conglomerate SK group, has bought a stake in Nasdaq-listed vaccine developer Novavax Inc. for capital positive aspects, sources acquainted with the matter mentioned on Thursday.

SK Bioscience divested a 1.6% stake within the Maryland, biotechnology in america for 20 billion received ($14.7 million), or 1.06 million frequent shares for 18,877 received earlier this 12 months, based on banking trade sources.

The Korean drugmaker, whose holdings in Novavax fell from 5.5% to three.9%, stays a key shareholder with Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc., Shah Capital Administration, DE Shaw & Co. and State Road Corp.

The SK Group unit purchased a 5.5% stake, or 6.5 million shares, in Novavax for 111.4 billion received by means of a strategic partnership in August final 12 months. The value per share was 17,000 earned by means of a rights providing.

SK Bioscience has divested from Novavax shares because the inventory worth, caught beneath $4 in early February, rose greater than fivefold to hit a 52-week excessive of $23.86 in June because the drugmaker from the The USA signed an settlement price as much as $1.2 billion to collectively commercialize a COVID-19 vaccine and develop influenza-COVID-19 mixture vaccines with French drug large Sanofi in Could.

SK Bioscience started manufacturing of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccines beneath contract manufacturing group (CMO) and contract growth and manufacturing organizations (CDMO) plans in 2021.

Final 12 months, the Korean biotech prolonged the offers in addition to the licensing interval of Novavax’s know-how for the US firm’s COVID-10 variant vaccine because the pandemic was decided to have turn out to be endemic.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this text.