After a covid-fuelled adrenaline rush, biotech is crashing

ago no one had heard of . Today the German biotechnology firm , as well as annual revenues of $19bn. The company owes both the lustre and the lucre chiefly to the successful m which it developed in partnership with , an American drug giant. Yet even the effective jab has not immunised it from a downturn afflicting the biotech industry. On August 8th BioNTech reported that sales fell by 40% in the second quarter, year on year, as fewer people are left unjabbed and unboosted. Its share price tumbled by nearly 9%.The biotech industry is particularly vulnerable to the syndrome of slowing economic growth, higher inflation and rising interest rates. As with other tech startups, rate rises make promised profits, most of which lie far in the future, look less hale today. Unlike software firms, biotech companies need constant injections of capital to develop their drugs, which takes lots of time and money.