U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that a potential coronavirus vaccine could be ready as early as by the end of the year.
“I think we’ll have a vaccine by the end of the year and we are pushing very hard,” Trump said at the Fox News virtual town hall at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Sunday, adding that he was “very confident” a vaccine would be available in December. “We’re building supply lines, we even have the final vaccine.”
Following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, public and private sector experts have estimated that the roll-out of a vaccine could take up to 18 months, if not longer.
“The doctors would say, well, you shouldn’t say that. I’ll say what I think,” Trump said. “I met with the heads of the big companies, these are great companies. I think we’re going to have a vaccine much sooner than later.” Trump asserted that a string of pharmaceutical companies are “close” to vaccine development, mentioning Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in particular.
On April 23, J&J announced a collaboration between the its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies and Emergent BioSolutions, Inc. to ramp up the manufacturing of its lead investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate. J&J goal is to supply more than one billion doses of the vaccine globally. For now, J&J has started preparations for clinical vaccine production at its facility in Leiden, the Netherlands, with the target of initiating Phase 1 human clinical studies in September 2020.
At the end of last month, Merrill Lynch analyst Bob Hopkins raised J&J’s stock to Buy from Hold saying that in turbulent market environment it has historically shown to be a defensive name and as such has the potential of outperforming the broader stock market during the pandemic. Shares in the healthcare giant have surged 25% from their low on March 23, trading at $148.29 as of Friday.
Overall Wall Street analysts are cautiously optimistic on the outlook for the shares with 9 Buys and 4 Hold adding up to a Moderate Buy consensus rating. The $163.42 average price target predicts the stock will add 10% in the coming 12 months. (See JNJ stock analysis on TipRanks).
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