jueves, 30 de julio de 2020

The year’s hottest pharma stock is Kodak

The Readout
Damian Garde & Meghana Keshavan

The year’s hottest pharma stock is Kodak

Moderna gets a lot of attention for roughly quadrupling in value since the start of 2020. Same for Vir Biotechnology, which has more than tripled, and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, which is up six-fold. But none can match the one-day stock performance of Eastman Kodak, the erstwhile camera manufacturer that, thanks to a $765 million government loan, is pivoting to the drug business.

Kodak’s share price rose by about 1,700% on Wednesday after the company announced its plans to start manufacturing active ingredients for generic drugs, which CEO Jim Continenza said will eventually make up a sizable share of its business.

As Bloomberg’s Max Nisen points out, Kodak might struggle to live up to its newfound valuation. Manufacturing such chemicals is a low-margin, commoditized endeavor, one largely dominated by companies in China and India. The idea behind the government’s loan is to bring more of that manufacturing back American shores. But even in the best-case scenario for the nascent Kodak Pharma, the company will be staking its future on a business that left the U.S. for some compelling economic reasons.

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