On Friday, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) stock closed 0.75% up at $148.70. In the pre-market today, JNJ shares are up another 0.20% up, trading at $149.00.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) is one of the coronavirus vaccine race players along with Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA), Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: INO), Novavax Inc (NASDAQ: NVAX), and more. As Johnson & Johnson has shared promising news about its plan to produce 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021, JNJ stock is rising.
Johnson & Johnson Progress in COVID-19 Vaccine Development
Johnson & Johnson announced working on the coronavirus vaccine on March 30. The company has also pledged over $1 billion of investment in partnership with the federal biomedical Advanced research and Development Authority. As Johnson & Johnson said at that time, the human trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine would start this September, with the vaccine ready for emergency use authorization early next year.
Recently, the company’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels said Johnson & Johnson would start producing the vaccine later this year. He has also shared the company’s plan to produce as much as 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021.
Dr. Paul Stoffels stated:
“We are preparing clinical trials, we are fully and upscaling. We start clinical trials in September and hope to have data by the end of the year. As well as now working toward one billion vaccines for next year. We will have some vaccine available this year, but it will depend on the authorities – the FDA and others – to decide whether it can be used earlier, before efficacy data are available.”
Johnson & Johnson CEO has also gone in skeptical about the U.S. President Donald Trump‘s statement. Earlier, Trump said that coronavirus would ‘go away without a vaccine’. He said:
“Those viruses have never shown up again. They die, too. Like everything else, they die. It is going to go away and we’re not going to see it ever again, hopefully, after a period of time. I just rely on what doctors say.”
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) Stock Performance
On Friday, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) stock closed 0.75% up at $148.70. In the pre-market today, JNJ shares are up another 0.20% up, trading at $149.00.
Since the beginning of 2020, Johnson & Johnson stock was declining. But on March 30, after the CEO Alex Gorsky announced working on the COVID-19 vaccine, the company’s shares soared. Since then, JNJ stock has been steadily rising, making the annual stock change rise to 1.94%. Johnson & Johnson’s market cap is $392.025 billion. The 52-week highest stock price was $157.00, the 52-week low was $109.16.
JNJ stock is a good stock to consider for investing. The company has shown quite good results fo the first quarter of 2020, beating analysts’ expectations. It came out with quarterly earnings of $2.30 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.03 per share. The revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 7.48% and totaled $20.69 billion.
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