Vaxxinity Issues Shareholder Letter
20 April 2024 - 8:53AM
Vaxxinity, Inc. (“Vaxxinity”, “we”, “us” or the “Company”)
(Nasdaq: VAXX), a U.S. company pioneering the development of a new
class of medicines, today announced issued a letter to shareholders
from its Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Lou Reese and Chief
Executive Officer, Mei Mei Hu.
To Shareholders of Vaxxinity, Inc.:
Earlier today, we announced that we are delisting and
deregistering our shares. A few weeks from now, we will no longer
be publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange. It is important to share
why we made this decision to “go dark” and why we believe it is in
the best interests of the company and our shareholders over the
longer-term.
Being a public company is very expensive and incredibly
time-consuming. Choosing to go public is a path many pursue
primarily to obtain access to greater institutional pools of
capital.
Since the company’s IPO in November 2021, the capital markets
have been uniquely and historically adverse for biotech. In
retrospect, institutional support withdrew from the market,
liquidity dried up and we found ourselves in a downward spiral:
- The Biotech XBI index decreased for three consecutive
years
- Of the over 40 companies that went public in the second half of
2021, only two are trading positively and the majority have
decreased more than 80% from their IPO price
- Overall, IPO proceeds dropped by 93% from 2021 to 2022
Even in light of these market conditions, Vaxxinity has achieved
remarkable successes and results, including:
- Positive Phase 3 results, validating our platform in COVID
- Generating industry-leading data in Parkinson’s patients
- Receipt of FDA Fast Track designation for Alzheimer’s
program
- Two new programs progressing from animal studies into the
clinic
- External validation through over $10M in non-dilutive funding
from leading organizations
As we witnessed first-hand, downward selling pressure often has
nothing to do with company performance. Rather, perversely, we saw
investors selling because we were their top-performing portfolio
company or selling into good news for the relatively enhanced
liquidity. That being said, our liquidity is significantly limited
by low daily trading volume which makes it difficult to get both in
and out. Relatively few shares openly traded on the market can have
an outsized impact on our share price.
The costs and resources required to be public, however, continue
to be substantial. We spent $3.7M on our first year as a public
company on D&O insurance alone. To put that in context, that is
equivalent to a large Phase 1 clinical trial. Overall, we are
bearing all the costs associated with being public without being
able to afford ourselves any of the traditional benefits of access
to the public capital markets.
Given these dynamics, after careful consideration, the
Board of Directors of Vaxxinity has determined that being a private
company will give us significantly more opportunity and flexibility
going forward to deliver shareholder value and patient
impact. Ironically, we expect better access to capital as
a private company in today’s environment. Additionally, being
private will allow us to focus on what matters most, advancing our
science and helping patients.
And we believe our science superior. We have shown that
Vaxxinity can create vaccines that are as good, if not better, than
those already in the market. We did it with COVID, and achieved it
with a fraction of our competitors’ resources. In 2.5 years,
we:
- Received an FDA EUA on our antibody test
- Successfully brought our vaccine through a Phase 3 head-to-head
with the best-selling vaccine of all time demonstrating that we
developed a safer, broader coverage COVID booster
- Ramped up GMP manufacturing of over 200 million doses of
vaccine antigen
We recognize that COVID is no longer a top global health
priority, but if it were, we believe we would have a best-in-class
vaccine offered at 10% of our competitors’ price, or put another
way, we would be fulfilling our mission to limit suffering and
increase access to the best healthcare solutions in the world.
We are now pivoting our focus to another more pernicious, deadly
and costly pandemic – neurodegenerative diseases, specifically
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. These slow-progressing diseases affect
large and growing global populations, and thus require safe,
convenient, and scalable solutions that can intervene early to
prevent the disease from worsening. We have the most advanced
active immunotherapies in development leveraging cutting-edge
technology and an unprecedented opportunity to alleviate the world
from its most feared, expensive and devastating diseases. As a
private company, we believe we will be better able to keep
tirelessly pushing forward, buoyed by purpose and driven by
impact.
For those of you who choose to sell before we stop trading, we
sincerely appreciate your interest in our technology and story to
date. For those of you that elect to remain as shareholders through
this transition, we would like to thank you in advance for sharing
our vision of growing a valued company on a mission of eliminating
as much suffering as possible.
Onwards and upwards,Lou and Mei Mei
Investor ContactMark
Joinnidesir@vaxxinity.com
Press ContactMcKenna Millermmiller@kcsa.com
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bf160bad-7ae3-42b9-a31c-e367900b5295
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d0691987-2866-46f6-9107-24f857463fc2
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