Novavax posts first profitable quarter amid global COVID-19 vaccine rollout

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss first quarter earnings for Novavax.

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BRAD SMITH: Let's take a look at Novavax. Novavax missed expectations on the top and bottom line. Shares are falling sharply here. As we've begun trading, you're seeing shares open lower by about 18% for Novavax. They shipped just 31 million vaccine doses during the quarter. That's well off of its projection of 2 billion shots for 2022. Novavax, of course, one of the candidates that had kind of fallen by the wayside in comparison to the other candidates that had moved forward with some of the emergency-use authorizations-- Pfizer, BioNTech. We had seen, of course, Moderna and their vaccine. J&J even had moved at a quicker pace than Novavax.

However, for Novavax, they have been looking more internationally with their scale and scope and being able to try and address some of the lower-income nations, as well, and make some of their vaccine candidates available. But as of right now, I mean, $704 million in revenue in this most recent quarter. First profitable quarter, we should also mention as well.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, because Novavax is another one of these companies like Moderna that didn't have products on the market before this, right. They were in experimental phases. So now coming out with that revenue miss. But also, there's some questions about the vaccine alliance, Gavi, and whether they are going to renegotiate some of their agreements with Novavax. Just like here in the United States, there are some questions about congressional funding for continued vaccines, free vaccines for everybody. Remember that hit Pfizer when Pfizer came out with these numbers.

It seems like this is a similar issue on the more international stage for Novavax and one of the reasons why it's getting hit to the degree that it is after that revenue miss as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: A quick add for me here. What is Novavax? They are a biotech. They have the word tech in their name. And to that end, like we've been talking about the past two days, the most important metric for these companies right now, free cash flow. Novavax outflow of $104 million, not going to be well-received in this market.