What happened
Shares of vaccine maker CureVac (CVAC 3.69%) were sinking 10.8% lower as of 10:43 a.m. ET on Friday. The decline came after investment company dievini and the German government announced the signing of a revised shareholder agreement on Thursday related to their shares in CureVac.
With the changes to the shareholder agreement, dievini will sell some of its shares in CureVac to finance a restructuring of the investment company. This restructuring relates to succession planning for German businessman Dietmar Hopp's estate. As part of this succession planning, ownership of dievini will shift to the Hopp family. Current managing co-partners of the investment company will be bought out.
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So what
Why did the vaccine stock fall on the news of these shareholder agreement changes? The restructuring of dievini means that a large block of CureVac shares will be sold in the near future. Investors are concerned that this could create downward pressure on the price of the German vaccine maker.
There was some good news for CureVac, though. Other than the stock sold to finance the restructuring, neither dievini, Dietmar Hopp, Hopp's holding company (DH-LT-Investments), nor the German government currently plan to sell any of their shares of CureVac to third parties.
Now what
The main thing to watch with CureVac going forward is the company's progress in developing second-generation messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. CureVac and GSK hope to advance a second-generation mRNA candidate into late-stage testing this year. In October, the partners withdrew their first-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidate, CVnCoV, from consideration for approval by the European Medicines Agency.
