Leading Irish shares add €1.25bn in value with Moderna vaccine boost
The Moderna vaccine has an additional advantage in that it can be stored near fridge temperatures and without the Arctic-low temperature required by the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.
Leading Irish stock market firms for a second successive Monday added a cumulative €1.25bn after Moderna became the latest pharma firm to publish outstanding results of an advanced trial for a Covid-19 vaccine, promising to lift the siege on economies around the world.
The second buying spree in a week came after Moderna of the US said its vaccine trial of 30,000 people showed a success rate of 94.5%, bettering even the outstanding performance of Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech in its trial.
The Moderna vaccine has an additional advantage in that it can be stored near fridge temperatures and without the Arctic-low temperature required by the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. Moderna shares shot up almost 10%, while Pfizer fell 4%.
“Like buses, good news on the Covid front appears to be coming all at once, or at least with respect to vaccines," said Chris Beauchamp at online broker IG.
In Ireland, the shares of a wide range of listed firms put on a combined €1.25bn for the second time in a week. The shares of AIB and Bank of Ireland, which international investors use as proxies for the battered Irish economy, rose by €300m.
Ryanair added €300m to its €17bn market value; Irish-Ferries-owner ICG gained €30m to value of €766m; and Dalata Hotel Group, which owns the Clayton and Maldron chains, also climbed, with €45m added to its valuation of €821m.
Airlines, travel companies, hotels, and drinks and hospitality firms have been among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 fallout.
Food giants Kerry Group and Glanbia, although not directly in the frontline of the Covid crisis, also rose strongly. Kerry added €418m to value it at €21.5bn and Glanbia gained 4% to €3bn.
In London, shares of IAG, the owner of Aer Lingus, BA, and Iberia, climbed by over 10% to value it at £7.7bn (€8.6bn). And shares in Diageo, which makes Guinness and Baileys, at one stage added €4bn to its market value.
The European Commission will have orders for 160 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, adding to the 300 million vials it secured of the two-shot vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech by last week. Other EU deals with pharma firms in Phase 3 trials could include AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK and Jansen Pharma.
An Irish facility for Pfizer in Grange Castle in west Dublin is playing a key role in testing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
For Europe, Pfizer has a plant near Antwerp in Belgium and the vaccine is tested in Dublin as part of the final stage in a quality control process.
Kieran McQuinn, research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), told the Irish Examiner that “all going well” the vaccine news could help Irish firms that are teetering on disaster to "hang in there" over Christmas.
The results from the vaccine trials could accelerate the recovery next year, boost Government finances, and mean that Irish unemployment will be a single-digit rate next year and not the 10% level the ESRI forecast just weeks ago before it was known that the vaccines could be so successful, Prof McQuinn said.
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