BioNTech posts €10.3b profit in 2021

Coronavirus vaccine developer and manufacturer BioNTech made a net profit of €10.29 billion last year, reported dpa.

Turnover was just under €19 billion, the German company - whose new-type mRNA vaccine was the first to receive Europe-wide approval from regulators in late 2020 - announced on Wednesday.

Both figures far surpassed the previous financial results of the Mainz-based firm. In 2020, the firm made a profit of €15.2 million on sales of €482 million.

BioNTech reiterated a sales forecast for its Covid-19 vaccine of between €13-17 billion for this year. Signed orders for 2022 delivery were now at 2.4 billion doses the firm said.

The company, co-founded and still run by scientist couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, said it expects to publish initial clinical trial data on a vaccine tailored to the Omicron variant in April.

The company's management is seeking approval for a share buyback programme of up to $1.5 billion during the next two years and proposing a special dividend of €2 per share.

Last year, the firm said it shipped about 2.6 billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine, 100 million more than expected.

Research and development spending is expected to increase by about 50% this year compared to 2021, to between €1.4 billion and €1.5 billion.