Why Novavax has fallen more than 4% today

What happened

Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) stumbled Monday, with a stock down 4.4%. The main reason for the coronavirus vaccine developer’s decline appears to be a set of sales of company shares reported earlier today to key insiders.

So what

Citing regulatory documents, Reuters reported that biotech CEO Stanley Erck and “three lieutenants” he did not name have sold around $ 46 million of Novavax shares since the start of 2020.

In 2020, Erck sold $ 8.7 million in shares. According to Reuters, this represented more than 20% of his acquired stake in the company. This amount was also almost four times the $ 2.2 million it unloaded over the previous five years.

While Novavax is actively developing a vaccine against the coronavirus – NVX-CoV2373 – it is still in clinical testing. Several rival vaccines have already been cleared for use by major regulators.

Reuters quoted an anonymous biotech spokeswoman, suggesting that these sales are not unwanted. She said that the executives of the company “continue to have a substantial personal and professional interest in the success of Novavax as well as the financial one”.

Now what

Company insiders are selling stocks all the time to boost their liquidity. Also, even with the recent pullbacks, Novavax shares have risen by almost 2,900% in the past year, so they are much more expensive than they were before. Still, it’s not really a good idea for the company when its vaccine candidate hasn’t hit the market yet.