Novavax stock surges amid earnings miss, 25% workforce reduction announcement

Yahoo Finance health care reporter Anjalee Khemlani details Novavax's latest earnings report.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's also take a look at Novavax. That closed higher. Look at that, up 27%, almost 30% despite posting a wider than expected loss for the most recent quarter. Anjalee Khemlani joining us now to break it all down. And Anjalee, there's a real focus just on what we could see here from Novavax in the future. And that seems to be what's moving the stock today.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely, it's such a shift for the company with a new CEO in place. You know that they missed on the revenue, as you just mentioned. Expecting and also significantly down from the quarter last year where they were really in the thick of things in terms of orders. As you see, reporting about $80.95 million. And that's a little bit less than what was expected, which was closer to $95 million for revenue for the quarter.

But all things told, we've got some nice signals from, not just the new CEO, but also the new head of R&D, about what to expect about this company, which, as we know, only has one product on the market-- that's the COVID vaccine-- and has several other vaccines in line but only at the phase two mark. So they've got the RSV vaccine. They've got their flu vaccine and the combo flu and COVID vaccine all in various stages, phase two, phase three.

Now, CEO telling us that one of the key things that has changed for this company now is that they now have an open line with the FDA. He said, quote, "One thing we did was change the relationship with the FDA." If you recall, during the pandemic really facing a tough time trying to get their vaccine through and to the finish line. And that's why they lagged behind the mRNA vaccines.

Now we're also-- we also heard from the-- from the president of R&D, Filip Dubovsky, saying, quote, "We didn't budget for the clinical work for any of these pipeline products. So to move them forward, it's going to have to be strategic partnerships."

So you're hearing mixed messages, kind of like the mixed earnings today, looking at down the line what this company needs to get the rest of its pipeline advanced and to the finish line. And so the company acknowledging that they cannot do it alone. They acknowledge that they are winding down.

They also had to cut part of its workforce 25%. And they're also cutting R&D spend for the year. So all told, really mixed outlook, really interesting to see what this company has in store.

SEANA SMITH: Certainly is. Well, shares popping today at least. Anjalee Khemlani, thanks so much.