PETALING JAYA: Pharmaniaga Bhd’s initiative of supplying vaccines out of Malaysia will see its business prospering beyond the local sector.

       Its long-term prospects also remains positive and with the group’s other strategies in providing access to its pharmaceuticals as well as increasing capacities and capabilities.

       However, the collaboration with Myanmar to distribute Sinovac vaccines has been factored in for the current quarter, and will not have an extreme effect on the group’s earnings for the year.

       MIDF Research said it would not make any changes to its earnings estimates.

       It maintained its “buy’’ call with unchanged target price of 98 sen per share.

       The research house said, in its latest report, that Pharmaniaga has been on the roll in pushing through the limits of the logistics for its fill-finish vaccines.

       In addition to providing booster shots for the national immunisation programme, the group is also paving the way to increase immunisation in the region to fight against the spread of the pandemic.

       Recently, Pharmaniaga made an entry into the international market for its vaccines, via the successful export of the first batch of fill-finish Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines to Myanmar.

       The exported vaccines were manufactured by Pharmaniaga’s wholly-owned subsidiary Pharmaniaga LifeScience Sdn Bhd, and will be marketed by Hemas Mandalar Pharmaceuticals Ltd (HMP), a Myanmar-based pharmaceutical company.

       MIDF Research said HMP had placed an order of 200,000 doses of the fill-finish vaccines from Pharmaniaga.

       “The collaboration with HMP is expected to fortify Pharmaniaga’s established international business relationships, and consequently develop future businesses in vaccine distribution,” the research house pointed out. The research house said the successful export had given Pharmaniaga ample assurance to explore similar opportunities in other countries in the South-East Asian region, as well as in Africa. The group is also awaiting regulatory permissions in other countries for the sale and distribution of Sinovac.

       South-East Asian countries have been struggling with the spread of the Delta variant, which had caused a drastic rise in infections and deaths in most of the nations in the region.

       While Singapore and Malaysia had been ramping up vaccine rollouts to curb the spread, Myanmar became one of the countries with the highest Covid-19 infection rates and the lowest capacity for vaccinations with only 15% of its population being fully vaccinated.

       It believed that with the initiative made by Pharmaniaga to distribute its fill-finish Sinovac vaccines beyond the local population, the number of vaccinated persons would increase, subsequently curbing infection rates in South-East Asia.

       Nevertheless, this is a subject of approval, it added.