News of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate performing well has caused markets to rally this week.
The two companies are collaborating on a vaccine candidate that has proven in early clinical data to be approximately 90% effective, and the news helped to propel MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index to a new record high yesterday.
However, a handful of companies that received boosts earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic because of their production of testing for the virus saw the news of the vaccine sink their stocks a bit, according to historical data from Yahoo Finance.
Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO), which just last month had confirmed an all-time high in per-share price after 48% growth from the beginning of the year thanks in large part to its work during the pandemic, saw a stark drop-off.
The diagnostics company finished last week trading at $527.66 per share, but on Monday it fell to $484.99. Then, today, it got hit harder, falling to $464.76 and marking an 11.9% total descent.
Marlborough, Mass.-based Hologic (NSDQ:HOLX), one of the leaders in testing since the pandemic began and a recipient of multiple government contracts, dipped from $75.05 per share at the end of last week to $68.35 per share yesterday and has since taken an even bigger hit, currently sitting at $65.78 — a 12.4% total drop from last Friday.
Quidel Corp. (NSDW:QDEL) took the largest hit, experiencing a -30.4% drop from the end of last week to today, falling nearly $90 per share from $283.45 to $197.43.
Even Abbott (NYSE:ABT), which benefits from numerous segments helping its stock out without relying on diagnostics, experienced a drop over the past few days, falling from $114.42 to $110.46 for a -3.5% dip. Conversely, Becton Dickinson, which also has other business segments to fall back on, has risen 1.8% since Nov. 6, perhaps slightly bucking the trend of diagnostics developers falling behind as coronavirus vaccine news affects the markets.
