Questor: from BioNTech to Ocado and Trainline, how the vaccine moved our tips

Questor share tips: the market soared on the vaccine’s success, but not every stock went up. Here are some of our winners and losers

Richard Evans 11 November 2020 • 6:00am

Vaccine hopes put a rocket under the stock market on Monday. Let’s see what they did to some of Questor’s recent selections.

Fortune smiled on us when in August we tipped BioNTech, Pfizer’s partner in the development of the new vaccine whose stunning success in trials was announced on Monday. The shares stand 65pc higher than when we backed them.

What much of the excited commentary has failed to mention is that it is actually BioNTech’s science that lies behind the breakthrough, not Pfizer’s.

The much smaller German company’s approach is to make a molecule called mRNA that gets the human body itself to produce the vaccine – a quicker, cheaper and more reliable method than the traditional one of making vaccines in a pharmaceutical factory. The same approach can also be used to fight cancer.

Bianca Ogden, the former virologist who now runs the Platinum International Health Care fund, who put Questor on to BioNTech, said: “The announcement this week from BioNTech and Pfizer has put mRNA on the map as an alternative drug modality, which is a very exciting first step.”

Questor says: hold

Ticker: Nasdaq: BNTX

Share price at close: $112.76

Tristel

Tristel is another pandemic winner among our picks: it makes hospital-grade disinfectants. Since we first tipped the stock in December 2018 it has gained 110pc; since we looked at it again in February, as the virus was taking hold, its gain is a more modest 12pc.

We suspect that the impulse to improve hygiene in hospitals will outlast this pandemic and that Tristel will be a long-term beneficiary.

Questor says: hold

Ticker: TSTL

Share price at close: 515p

Roche

We tipped Roche, the Swiss healthcare giant, three weeks ago, when we pointed out that its large diagnostics business was likely to be central to Britain’s efforts to test for coronavirus on a truly massive scale.

The possibility that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will cut short the pandemic seems to have weighed on the shares on Monday, when they lost 3.1pc.

There is far more to the company than Covid testing, however: its other diagnostics capabilities are playing an ever greater role in health services because accurate, early diagnoses save money as well as lives.

Its innovative “immunotherapy” cancer drugs are part of a new wave of better treatments based on the decoding of the human genome.

Questor says: hold

Ticker: SWX: ROG

Share price at close: CHF 305.25

Delivery Hero

Delivery Hero’s shares lost almost 6pc on Monday because home delivery has boomed so much during the pandemic.

Our tip, just two and a half weeks ago, was based on much more deep-seated developments, however, such as the scope that delivery apps have to offer the choice, quality and value that will prompt people to abandon cooking for themselves.

The apps are also broadening their service to include rapid grocery deliveries, a kind of online convenience shopping.

Despite Monday’s fall the shares are 17pc to the good since our tip. Hold.

Questor says: hold

Ticker: ETR: DHER

Share price at close: €106.20

Ocado

Ocado was another vaccine victim – its shares lost 11.5pc on Monday, although they have almost doubled since we tipped them in March. No doubt investors feared an end, or a slowing, of the online grocery boom once newly vaccinated shoppers ventured to supermarkets once again.

But we see this as another trend that will continue irrespective of the defeat of the virus. Better still, Ocado has developed technology for operating automated warehouses that it sells all over the world, including in markets where online shopping is much less developed and therefore has huge scope to grow.

Supermarkets will continue to build these warehouses in anticipation of demand that stretches years into the future, well after we have finally seen the last of coronavirus.

Questor says: hold

Ticker: OCDO

Share price at close: £21.64

Trainline

The recovery in the share price of Trainline, the online ticket retailer, on Monday was a sight to behold: they ended the day 32pc higher.

This may look overdone but they had slumped by more than half after the virus struck; and it may be that more flexible patterns of travel in the post-Covid era, as five-day-a-week commuting loses it appeal, will lead to more individual tickets being bought via Trainline.

Leisure travel should also recover well, although rail journeys to business meetings are likely to suffer thanks to the lower cost and arguably greater productivity offered by Zoom and its ilk.

At 400p Trainline’s shares are just 10.7pc below where we tipped them in October 2019.

Questor says: hold

Ticker: TRN

Share price at close: 400p