Replies to post #356428 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[marzan]

AZN's Covid Vaccine is already approved. CRL transcript says it is betting on a drug if it makes. And that is nothing but DcVaxL, imo.

[ATLnsider]

I doubt it Jerry. AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine has the lowest efficacy of all of the major vaccines.

In fact, the FDA may reject the AstraZeneca vaccine outright due to low efficacy:



https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/fda-could-reject-astra-zeneca-s-covid-vaccine-efficacy-and-manufacturing-shortfalls-analyst

By the time Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik, and Johnson & Johnson finish divvying up the COVID-19 vaccine market across the world,there will not be much left for AstraZeneca.

Also, after most Americans & people worldwide are vaccinated in over the next 2 to 3 years, there will be worldwide "herd immunity", and the only COVID-19 business remaining will be a few pockets of unvaccinated individuals, and maybe some booster shot business. This is not a sustainable business plan that will generate significant continuous revenue.

On the other hand, DCVax-L and DCVax Direct will generate multiple billions of dollars of revenue over the next foreseeable decades.

[sentiment_stocks]

I believe that the Covid Vaccine is a viral vector product out of Cobra, and the CEO of CRL makes it clear that Cognate's business, and their interesting in it is the "principally GMP Cell Therapy Manufacturing" part. As he also indicated, they are "quite confident we'll get substantial returns" on their investment.

Question by Tycho Peterson:
Hey. Thanks. A couple of follow-ups here. Jim starting with Cognate. I want to go back to John Kreger's question on CapEx. If we look at some of the other CDMOs whether it's Catalent with Paragon and MaSTherCell or Thermo with Brammer. The cost of building out facilities here are not insignificant in the kind of $150 million to $250 million range for commercial cell and gene therapy facilities.

So in the context of your CapEx guidance being $180 million, I'm just curious how we should be thinking about your willingness to take on maybe more -- much more significant investments?

Answer: So the CapEx will not be insignificant in this business. It will be meaningful, but I don't think we'll be disproportionate to the growth potential of this business. This will be amongst if not the highest growth aspect of our business. So we'll have to invest ahead of it as we've said earlier. Obviously, there's a substantial installed base already that we're buying. This business is principally GMP cell therapy manufacturing. And secondarily, the production of plasmid DNAs.

And while the CapEx is substantial it's less substantial in some aspects of contract manufacturing. So we're not really going head-to-head for instance with Thermo and Catalent that are more gene therapy manufacturing businesses. So it's difficult to get sort of what there spend is versus what ours will be? They won't be -- it won't be insignificant, but it will be a lower order of magnitude one that we're pretty confident we'll get substantial returns on and that we've already obviously baked through our model and we'll give you clarity on it as soon as we close this deal.