By
Godfrey Benjamin
October 4th, 2023
If the company’s vaccine proves its efficacy, JNJ stocks are poised to significantly benefit from it and are likely to experience much higher volatility.
American giant drugmaker Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) has pushed the development of its COVID-19 vaccine a notch higher on Monday. The company announced that it has begun a new large-scale late-stage trial for its coronavirus vaccine candidate. Consequently, JNJ stock has jumped approximately 0.2% to trade around $150.20 during the after-hours trading session. JNJ stocks closed on Friday 1.08% up at $149.90.
According to media outlet Reuters, Johnson & Johnson plans to onboard 30,000 participants for the trial study. In addition, Reuters reported the company will run a parallel one-dose trial with approximately 60,000 participants.
Notably, the JNJ UK faction of the late trial study is set to onboard 6,000 participants. And expects the rest to come from other countries including South Africa, United States, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Columbia, and the Philippines.
Despite the company being among the front runners in the course to develop an effective coronavirus vaccine, JNJ stocks have not experienced significant gains.
In the past 52 weeks, JNJ stocks have ranged between $109.16 and $157.00. According to metrics provided by MarketWatch, JNJ stocks are up 2.76% year to date, and managed to gain 0.61%, 3.87%, and 2.62% in the past three months, one month and five days respectively. Johnson & Johnson has a market capitalization of around $394.62 billion with 2.63 billion outstanding shares. Having been rated 17 times, JNJ stocks received an average of Over rating. Possibly since the company has several hurdles to overcome before its vaccine is approved for global mass use.
However, investors remain confident the company will deliver a successful vaccine amid competition from other pharmaceutical companies.
Being a multinational company, it is capable of conducting research with much more resources at its disposal.
JNJ Stocks Future with Company’s Coronavirus Vaccine
According to the recent figures provided, the total number of global coronavirus cases stands at 54,832,579, with fatalities at 1,324,689 and the total reported recovered cases at 38,147,815. However, the currently infected patient number stands at 15,360,075 with 99% of them displaying mild conditions and the rest seriously or critically infected.
With figures indicating a rising number of new infections, pharmaceutical companies are working under pressure to deliver a safe and efficient vaccine.
In the latest announced trials, the company will give the participants a dose of either a placebo or the experimental shot. After that, the company will give them a second dose 57 days later to gather more information.
“The study will assess efficacy of the investigational vaccine after both the first and second dose to evaluate protection against the virus and potential incremental benefits for duration of protection with a second dose,” J&J said in a statement.
Once successfully, JNJ stocks are poised to significantly benefit and are likely to experience much higher volatility.
