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Berlin, German | Xinhua | German developer and manufacturer of active immunotherapies BioNTech on Monday posted a loss of 190 million euros (209 million U.S. dollars) in the second quarter of 2023 as demand for its COVID-19 vaccine waned.
In the same period last year, the company made a profit of 1.67 billion euros. Looking ahead, BioNTech still anticipates “seasonal demand” and plans to release an adjusted COVID-19 vaccine in September.
Although its COVID-19 vaccine sales in the first half of the year only reached 1.4 billion euros, BioNTech is forecasting full-year sales of 5 billion euros.
“We enter the second half of 2023 with a strong financial position, on track to launch our new variant-adapted COVID-19 vaccine,” BioNTech Chief Financial Officer Jens Holstein said in a statement.
Cancer research, in which the company has its roots, is pushed ahead with numerous drugs in the pipeline, it said. These include vaccines based on messenger RiboNucleic Acid (mRNA), just like BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Due to declining revenues, BioNTech is reducing its planned research spending to no more than 2.2 billion euros this year. “With some uncertainty on the revenue line, we are also carefully watching our spending by revisiting our cost base,” Holstein said. (1 euro = 1.10 U.S. dollars) ■
