German Venture Capital Achieves 4500% Return from Early Investment in BioNTech

[Image source= Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] German venture capital firm MIG has announced that it will distribute dividends from its investment profits in BioNTech, the developer of the COVID-19 vaccine, drawing attention. According to major foreign media, MIG made a huge profit of over 4500% by investing in BioNTech at its early founding stage.

MIG stated that it will return the profits gained from its BioNTech investment by recently distributing 360 million euros in dividends to its fund investors. Last year, MIG also paid out 240 million euros in dividends, bringing the total cumulative dividends to 600 million euros. It is known that MIG invested 13.5 million euros at the early founding of BioNTech, which was established in 2008.

MIG mainly invests in the biotechnology sector. So far, it has invested about 580 million euros in over 40 companies. Among these, BioNTech has yielded the highest returns.

In its early days, BioNTech focused on developing cancer treatments and accumulated losses of 425 million euros over several years. However, it struck gold with the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. BioNTech's current market capitalization exceeds that of Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank.

BioNTech Stock Price Trend [Image Source= Bloomberg News]

BioNTech was listed on the Nasdaq market in October 2019. At the time of listing, the public offering price was $15 per share, and the stock price closed at $14.24 on the first day of trading.

In February last year, BioNTech announced its plan to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. In March last year, it formed a 50-50 partnership with the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer to start vaccine development. After successfully developing the vaccine, the stock price soared. When the vaccine development plan was announced last year, the stock price hovered around $30, but it closed at $117.57 on the 5th of this month.

At the time of listing, MIG held about a 6% stake in BioNTech. The current shareholding has decreased to less than 1%.

Christian Schmidt-Gabe, a partner at MIG, said, "We are very proud that BioNTech is playing a significant role in responding to COVID-19, and we are very pleased to be able to return considerable profits to our investors."

BioNTech has not yet disclosed the scale of profits from COVID-19 vaccine sales. Pfizer, which co-developed the vaccine, announced that it expects $15 billion in sales and $4 billion in net profit from the COVID-19 vaccine this year. BioNTech has separately signed a vaccine supply contract with China.

The largest shareholders of BioNTech are the Str?ngmann brothers, founders of the German pharmaceutical company Hexal. The twins, Thomas and Andreas Str?ngmann, were early investors in BioNTech and still hold about half of BioNTech's shares.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.