Patrick Soon-Shiong, a South African-born biopharma billionaire, has seen the market value of his share in ImmunityBio fall by more than $7.3 billion in the past year, as investors continue to sell off shares in the biotech business.
ImmunityBio Inc., originally NantKwest Inc., is a late-stage immunotherapy firm that develops cell and immunological treatments for the treatment of cancer and infectious disorders.
Soon-Shiong, a South African-American transplant surgeon who was instrumental in the development of ImmunityBio, owns 73.2 percent of the biotech business.
Shares in the publicly traded biotech company have fallen from more than $32 per share to less than $10 in the past year, as investors in the U.S. market dumped shares amid efforts to revive the biotech sector by shifting to Africa.
NantSA, one of ImmunityBio’s operating subsidiaries, opened a plant in South Africa last month with the aim to produce up to 1 billion COVID-19 vaccines per year by 2025, in line with Soon-Shiong’s plan to accelerate pharmaceutical, biologic, and vaccine production for patients on the continent.
The factory, which will be located in Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city, will be the first in Africa to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines from start to finish. The plant’s commissioning will assist Africa in overcoming its present rank as the world’s least-vaccinated continent.
Despite its aspirations for development in Africa, ImmunityBio’s shares in the nation have dropped by more than 75 percent.
Since Feb. 23, 2021, around a year ago, the company’s share price has gone from $32.38 to $7.08 per share as of the time of writing this article, resulting in a 78-percent loss for shareholders.
Meanwhile, the market value of Soon-73.2 Shiong’s percent share has declined from $9.4 billion on Feb. 23, 2021 to $2.1 billion at the time of writing.
This equates to a total loss of 7.3 billion for the wealthy pharma mogul in the past year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth has now dropped from $16.3 billion to $10 billion.