Star vaccine products suffered a Waterloo. Last year, the RSV vaccine was amazing; this year, it fell back quickly. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline released its financial report, and its RSV vaccine Arexvy's sales in the third quarter fell 74% year-on-year, with sales of 188 million pounds, equivalent to 240 million US dollars. So, what caused the decline of Arexvy? According to GlaxoSmithKline, Arexvy suffered a triple blow. The core is that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has narrowed the scope of immunization recommendations. Previously, RSV vaccines were recommended for vaccination for people over 60 years old. In June of this year, the US CDC adjusted its recommendations for vaccination populations. After the adjustment, the scope was greatly narrowed, limited to: 1. Adults aged 75 and above. 2. High-risk groups aged 60-74. In addition, the US CDC recommends that it be used only as a single lifetime vaccination. In other words, RSV does not have a demand for repeat purchases like flu vaccines.

After the vaccination conditions were adjusted, the logic of the US RSV vaccine market changed directly. On the one hand, the vaccination population has been greatly reduced. The agency Airfinity predicts that the target audience will be reduced by 44%, almost halved; on the other hand, the demand for repeat purchases is no longer there, and the RSV vaccine has become a one-time transaction, and the total demand has further decreased. Under this logic, the shrinking sales of Arexvy seems understandable. However, the decline in Arexvy's sales is not only due to the adjustment of vaccination recommendations.

GlaxoSmithKline said that facing the upcoming autumn and winter virus season, some people chose to get the new crown vaccine, resulting in a delay in the demand for RSV vaccine. Judging from Pfizer's financial report, the demand for the new crown vaccine in the United States is still not low. In addition, GlaxoSmithKline believes that the third quarter of last year is not comparable. Because the RSV vaccine was just launched at that time, about two-thirds of the sales were inventory. Under this logic, the decline is also normal. In general, under this triple blow, Arexvy suffered a sharp drop "accident".

GlaxoSmithKline is still confident about the future of Arexvy and believes that the future sales peak of the vaccine can still reach 3 billion pounds. The core logic lies in two points: first, the international market has not yet opened up the incremental market; second, in the United States, about 80% of the people recommended by the CDC for RSV vaccination have not yet been vaccinated. In addition, GlaxoSmithKline is also studying the way to co-administer Arexvy with other vaccines to avoid conflicts caused by the new crown vaccine. For this reason, GlaxoSmithKline is full of confidence in Arexvy.

Of course, whether GlaxoSmithKline's expectations can be achieved in the future remains to be discussed. As the CDC changes the scope of the vaccination group, it is inevitable that the demand for the entire RSV vaccine market will be suppressed. The third-party agency Infinity believes that the market size of RSV vaccines in 2030 will be reduced from the previously expected US$4.7 billion to US$1.7 billion.

At the same time, there are also many competitors. At present, with players such as Pfizer, RSV vaccines have already shown a pattern of three countries competing for hegemony, and may be impacted by Chinese vaccines in the future. Therefore, for GlaxoSmithKline, whether it is capable of making Arexvy hit a sales peak of 3 billion pounds will take time to prove.

To some extent, this has also affected the survival space of domestic vaccine companies. At present, many domestic vaccine companies are focusing their research and development on the RSV vaccine field. For example, Clover Biopharmaceuticals' bivalent RSV candidate vaccine SCB-1019 is targeting Arexvy. Considering that Clover Biopharmaceuticals has failed in the COVID-19 vaccine, if the RSV vaccine still fails to achieve results, it will inevitably bring challenges to subsequent development.

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