00:00 Speaker A
Moderna shares down nearly 12% amid reports that FDA official Peter Marks who oversees vaccine development will step down from his position effective April 5th. The ouster also dragging down other biotech stocks this morning. Here with more Yahoo finances Angelique Camlani. So An, what does this mean for Moderna and other vaccine makers? What are the implications of this change?
00:34 Angelique
Yeah, really it just throws a lot of uncertainty into their future. Any company looking for approvals or any kind of other milestones, their trajectory is now put into uh uncertainty. And while Peter Marks’s resignation was not entirely surprised for Wall Street, you can see the impacts on stocks like Moderna, like Novavax, like Vaxcyte dropping the most there at more than 30%. So these companies are the ones that are most at risk, not just because of Marks leaving, but of course, uh you know, we’ve reported previously with the new HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, as well as uh FDA new lead uh Dr. Martin McCary. Those folks have been uh, you know, throwing some uncertainty into this sector because of their stances on vaccines. So it’s uncertain how much more research dollars are going to go into the sector, how much more of these contracts that they have with the government, some of these companies and developing certain vaccines, what happens to those in the future? It’s important to know there’s also other companies that are potentially at risk. I mentioned those that have upcoming milestones. Gilead is one of those down more than 4% today. And we heard a little bit from the street about how, you know, this wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but still has that level of uncertainty. Looking at Leering partners earlier today with a note saying that they believe that the higher multiple biopharma stocks are at greater risk than lower multiple stocks due to potential downward pressure. And then Mizuho strategies taking a step back, talking about how, you know, many believe that Mark’s resignation is a bad omen for the healthcare industry and innovation at large, but it may be a little premature to cast that dark shadow on the future of the two subsectors. So there you have it, just taking a look at, you know, uncertainty, yes, maybe pull back. We don’t know who’s going to replace Peter Marks and how they will, you know, choose to uh negotiate or relate to the current leaders in the administration.
03:34 Speaker A
Yeah, and Angelique, obviously another huge focus for this administration is a pullback in funding including almost 28 billion dollars in global health initiatives that the Trump administration does plan to cut. To what extent does that federal funding getting uh dialed back potentially lead to even more headwinds for some of these stocks?
04:07 Angelique
Yeah, this is also where, you know, global aid for vaccines, global aid for uh any kind of treatments is also at risk and we’ve talked about that with Robert Kennedy and what he could do, the the levers that he could pull with regard to this. HHS overseas a lot of these programs. And so how the administration is going to move uh act moving forward is still under uh scrutiny. We we do not know a lot about that and that’s sort of one of the the comments I saw from Wall Street is that there’s been a little pull back in transparency and what’s going on in these uh in these organizations and these departments. And so with greater transparency, we’ll actually get to know the answers to your question.
05:07 Speaker A
Thanks, appreciate it.