SK Bioscience sells stake in US vaccine developer Novavax

SK Bioscience Co., a drug-making arm of South Korea's No. 2 conglomerate SK Group, has sold a stake in Nasdaq-listed vaccine developer Novavax Inc. for capital gains, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

SK Bioscience divested a 1.6% stake in the Maryland, US-based biotech for 20 billion won ($14.7 million), or 1.06 million common shares for 18,877 won apiece earlier this year, according to banking industry sources.

The Korean drugmaker, of which holdings in Novavax fell from 5.5% to 3.9%, is still a key shareholder with Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc., Shah Capital Management, D. E. Shaw & Co. and State Street Corp.

The SK Group unit bought a 5.5% stake, or 6.5 million shares, in Novavax for 111.4 billion won via a strategic partnership in August last year. The price per share was 17,000 won through a rights offering.

SK Bioscience has divested of Novavax shares as the stock price, which was stuck below $4 in early February, rose by more than five times to hit a 52-week-high of $23.86 in June as the US drugmaker signed a deal valued up to $1.2 billion to co-commercialize a COVID-19 vaccine and develop flu-COVID-19 combination vaccines with French drug giant Sanofi in May.

SK Bioscience started to produce Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccines under contract manufacturing organization (CMO) and contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) schemes in 2021.

Last year, the Korean biotech extended the deals as well as Novavax’s technology licensing period for the US firm’s COVID-10 variant vaccine as the pandemic was determined to have become endemic.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.