Thread by @SDullien

Big news: According to the details in today’s quarterly report, #Biontech alone is now set to boost German GDP this year by 0.5 % and hence German GDP *growth* 2021 by 0.5 percentage points. This is quite extraordinary for a start-up. 1/

Usually, as a macroeconomist, I do not tweet about individual companies. Sometimes, however, there are rare cases where single companies have a macroeconomic relevance. #Biontech is such a rare example. 2/

Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: #Biontech has estimated the revenue from #Covid19 vaccines for 2021 to €15.9 billion, which is roughly 0.5 % of GDP. As Biontech had only marginal sales in 2020, this impacts also GDP growth rate almost 1-to-1. 3/
investors.biontech.de/node/10446/pdf

While some of this revenue might include material purchased from abroad (which would not be counted in GDP), the overall part of this is most likely either profits or expenditure in Germany, hence directly impacting GDP. 4/

This size is no small feat. I do not remember any case where a company had that kind of impact on German GDP. Take Volkswagen for example: They have a much higher revenue; and from 2018 to 2019, revenue rose by €18bn. 5/

However, in the case of Volkswagen, much of this revenue change was because of changes in production OUTSIDE of Germany, hence not counting towards German GDP. In contrast, much of #Biontech’s revenue ends up directly as German GDP. 6/

First, #Biontech is producing in Marburg. It is putting production capacities at 1 billion doses per year. Value-added there is counted towards German GDP. Second, #Biontech has a profit sharing agreement with #Pfizer, and these profits are also counted as German GDP. /END