|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Global firms which have been the major beneficiaries of the coronavirus pandemic and the disruption it caused to the normal order of life and business, have seen their fortunes plummet Monday after credible news that the world is on the verge of a vaccine to fight the scourge.
Promising results from a study of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccine for Covid-19 sent their shares down as the world began to look forward for the first time to life like before the pandemic.
Groups seen as beneficiaries of the pandemic including Zoom which helped us to turn to the virtual space for our meetings and conferences as well as meal delivery firms that brought home our food orders were punished as the world banks on hopes a vaccine could be available by end of year.
The value of Zoom fell 13% while the shares of HelloFresh, the meal delivery service, fell 15 per cent in Frankfurt.
In London Ocado, the UK group that delivers groceries and sells technology to do so to big supermarket chains such as Kroger of the US, fell 12 per cent.
The valuation of companies that have developed and sold tests to diagnose Covid-19 were sent spiraling, wiping out about $38 billion in market value across more than a dozen stocks.
Concerns about the sustainability of profits for the testing-kit market erased about a third of Quidel Corp.’s value.
High-flying stocks such as Hologic and Inc. and Qiagen tumbled 8% or more, while competitors like Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Abbott Laboratories, and Danaher Corp. shed billions in value as their stocks faded.
Investors also dumped government bonds on hopes that central banks would not have to go to such extreme lengths to stimulate economies if a vaccine put an end to the recent wave of restrictions.
The 10-year US Treasury yield leapt 0.13 percentage points to 0.95 per cent, its highest level since March, with European bonds following in its wake.
