EuroBusiness Media (EBM): Valneva is a leading European biotech company specialising in the field of vaccines. I have the pleasure of meeting with its CEO today, Thomas Lingelbach, hello. Tell us in a few words about Valneva and about its sector, the vaccines industry and what differences there are between that industry and the broader pharmaceutical industry.
Thomas Lingelbach: Valneva is, as you rightly mentioned, a vaccine biotech company, a European one with global reach. We are developing, manufacturing and commercialising vaccines and the vaccine space is a very particular one, because the health economics today drive prevention rather than therapy. It’s cheaper. The vaccine market is a specialised segment because we are dealing with healthy people rather than ill patients and growing motilities, growing age, growing population, all these are growth drivers for the vaccine industry and the vaccine market today is a market with approximately 50 billion US dollars in total revenues and is dominated by four major pharmaceutical players and there are a few emerging small vaccine companies, such as Valneva, contributing to the growth and to the future innovation of the space.
EBM: With regards to your vaccines portfolio, you have two vaccines currently commercialised, three others going through R&D, tell us a little bit about all of them and specifically how you anticipate those three coming through to make a difference.
Thomas Lingelbach: We have basically the two pillars, as you rightly said, on the one hand side we have the commercial vaccines and here we have two vaccines in the travel vaccine sector. One vaccine is called IXIARO® which is a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis and this vaccine has generated revenues of approximately €28 million last year. We have a second vaccine that we recently acquired. This vaccine is called Dukoral® and it’s a vaccine against cholera and ETEC caused diarrhoea for travellers. We have three vaccines in what we call clinical stage development and all three vaccines are a vaccine against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Pseudomonas is a hospital acquired infection, number one cause of hospital acquired pneumonia. In late stage development, we have a vaccine against Chlostridium Diifficile, which is healthcare associated diarrhoea, in clinical phase 2. And we have a lime vaccine, one of the most emerging infectious diseases in the developed world in the sage of ready-to-go for clinical development. This is being complemented with a few vaccines that we have in research and especially here we are focusing on novel, innovative vaccines in the travel vaccine sector.
EBM: On the question of figures, give us an idea of how the company looks.
Thomas Lingelbach: Basically from a financial point of view, the company created last year revenues of approximately €42.4 million. Obviously, as I mentioned, we acquired now a second product, a second business, with a commercial product, but also with a first commercial infrastructure that is being leveraged for others. All together this leads this year to an expected revenue of 75 to 85 million euros. So a substantial shift in revenue growth from a bit more than €40 million to around €80 million. So almost doubling the revenues in 2015. More importantly, our company has a strategy that is geared towards financial self -sustainability. Last year, the company still made a significant loss. The most relevant figure to describe this is the EBITDA. The EBITDA was more than -20 million euros in 2013 and in 2014 we reduced this loss basically to approximately -7 million euros. This is a substantial achievement showing our efficiency improvement project, our consolidation but also the focus of the company towards vaccines.
EBM: Now, looking to the future, how do you see the company evolving?
Thomas Lingelbach: Valneva’s strategy is to build a business with growing revenues on the one hand side for our commercial products, the existing ones; future ones which we may get either through our own pipeline or by way of acquisitions and to reinvest proceeds into promising R&D candidates. By doing this value proposition, we expect to present ourselves as a financially self-sustainable company. We believe that based on our expertise on the vaccine market in terms of commercialisation but also with our proven track record on the vaccines R&D side, we are best positioned to deliver on this ambitious strategy. Our vision is to become the single largest, independent pure-play vaccine company in the world.
EBM: Thomas Lingelbach thank you very much indeed.
Thomas Lingelbach: You are welcome, thank you.
