The chief scientist at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals says his firm could quickly make a cocktail of antibodies that might protect medical workers from Covid-19, until vaccines are ready .
That possibility prompted Benchmark analyst Aydin Huseynov to upgrade Regeneron stock (ticker: REGN) to Buy from Hold, on the belief that billions in revenue from the Covid prophylactic could lift the shares to $655 from their current level of $550.
Huseynov noted in a research report that the biotech company’s co-founder and science chief George Yancopoulos recently spoke of producing a cocktail of several antibodies that could protect front-line workers from infection by the new coronavirus. Just on Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed to fast-track its approval review of a Regeneron antibody cocktail against the Ebola virus. The Ebola preventive did so well in a clinical trial that the study was halted early.
Regeneron would be able to produce as many as a million doses a month of the anti-Covid cocktail, which he hopes could serve as “bridge” to protect people at risk until vaccines arrive. In Thursday’s Ebola announcement, the scientist said clinical trials of the Covid cocktail could begin in June. Regeneron is already testing some of its other products as Covid treatments.
Benchmark’s Huseynov assigns a 50/50 chance to the cocktail’s success. But if it works, he thinks Regeneron could charge $10,000 a dose and generate an additional $50 billion in revenue for the year 2021. That lifts his revenue estimate for that year to an extravagant $60 billion, compared with the 2019 number of $7.9 billion.
The FDA would probably give the Covid-preventive the same speedy review it has promised Regeneron’s Ebola cocktail, writes Huseynov.
