Pfizer saves mankind 💉
Creator boost, venture deals, and declining port traffic.
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Market summary: 📊
Pretty solid opening to the week in India, with both indices up considerably. But as the vaccine news rolled out, global markets were thrown in a frenzy, with tech stocks particularly suffering.
US:
S&P 500 - up 1.17%
Nasdaq 100 - down 2.16%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 1.61%
Sensex - up 1.68%
Another unusually quiet news day last night, with the vaccine news keeping everyone busy. Expect Indian markets, companies, sectors to show major reactions to the news during today’s business day.
Pfizer delivers a vaccine 💉
Finally some positive news that signals an end to this nightmare—the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Pfizer is apparently able to prevent 90% of the infections in an interim analysis with some 94 patients tested.
In a joint effort with German biotech firm BioNTech, Pfizer tested its drug with tens of thousands of volunteers, giving some of them the vaccine while the rest got a placebo. Of that, some 94 patients contracted the coronavirus over time, and early details suggest 90% of that cohort was cured.
Trials are being conducted actively and more clarity is expected by the end of this week when a safety readout will be published with further details. The study will continue until a total of 164 people show evidence of cure, but scientists sound quite optimistic of the 90% recovery rates vs. the 60-70% that was expected in early research, at best.
So far 1.2 million people around the world have been killed by the pandemic and this could unlock a critical solution to ending this ungodly episode. Quite a climax to 2020!
Onto distribution challenges—developing and testing the vaccine is only a part of the equation. Delivering it to billions of people worldwide in record speed is likely going to be a logistical spectacle of magnitudes the world hasn’t seen in recent times.
Most major countries have deals in place to license and make the vaccine in key regions but last mile storage, delivery, etc. is going to be a costly affair with little margin for error. The vaccine needs to be stored in -94 F temperatures, a massive issue for example in India. Moneycontrol has the latest.
Pfzier says it can make over 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021, with 50 million vaccines delivered by the end of 2020 if all goes well.
Anyway, Pfizer stock promptly jumped yesterday while all the work-from-home stocks like Zoom, Netflix, Amazon, etc. were dumped by investors big time.
Latest from venture avenue 💰
Wellness Forever, an online pharmacy and wellness store scooped up $17.5 million from Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla and UAE-based Allana Group ahead of its IPO. Both investors were existing stockholders in the company, with Serum holding as much as 15% stake.
Wellness’ mix of online and offline operations has helped them clinch a solid victory in these times—riding the wave of digitization of India’s retail-pharmacy market, and then obviously benefitting from the boost healthcare segment got from COVID. The company has a footprint of 200 stores concentrated in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa, and plans to scale it up to 1,000 stores over the next three years.
Fresh capital will directly go to fuel store expansion, and strengthening private label brands under unit Amore, which focuses on broad wellness products. Doubling down on ecommerce is also a key agenda.
Some color on port cargo 🚢
Despite broad economic recovery seen nationwide, India’s port traffic which had nosedived during the worst of the pandemic in March, continues to lay low.
October registered another straight decline, with traffic at India’s top ports which account for 61% of the total traffic dropped down 12.43%. In September the decline was 14%, so relatively this month has been better but the pace of improvement puts odds of a bounceback very low.
The decline has been consistent across categories—with petroleum, coal, as well as container traffic down. Only Marmugoa port in Goa has seen a surge of about 16.5% YoY in traffic, but that’s because they’re slapping the tiny state with insane amounts of Coal traffic.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
✋ Stop that pollution - Agra District Magistrate has banned firecrackers in Agra, over concerns of deteriorating air quality. North India is struggling to get rid of the menace of air pollution, which particularly aggravates in the winters.
😎 Mainstream actors jump on solo creator brigade - Actor Rana Daggubati has launched a platform called South Bay, venturing into direct content creation. The channel will feature non scripted and quirky content with the aim of surfacing creators and audiences and open dialogues, capitalizing on growing demand for unfiltered content.
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