There's probably not much good news coming for this biotech in the near future.

Novavax (NVAX -2.88%) investors are looking at a share price decline of more than 90% over the past 12 months, and the shares are now trading close to their 52-week low. Though it successfully commercialized its Nuvaxovid jab in a slew of countries for primary series COVID-19 vaccinations, and also for booster vaccinations, the biotech is struggling to find a profitable future amid declining demand and persistent problems with its manufacturing operations.

The risk of this company failing to make a turnaround appears high. But savvy investors recognize that there's often an opportunity for significant returns on investment when the general market sentiment about a business is poorer than is warranted.

So is Novavax stock a buy now, during what appears to be the winter of its discontent, or would investors be better served to avoid it and invest in more reliable businesses? The better choice is the latter one, and it isn't a contest.

Manufacturing problems are hampering revenue

Perhaps the most important reason why you shouldn't rush to invest in Novavax is that it (still) hasn't demonstrated that it can actually deliver its COVID-19 vaccine to customers in the quantities they require. Per a regulatory filing on Nov. 18, it severed its purchase agreement for 350 million doses with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an international public-private health partnership dedicated to improving vaccination rates in poorer countries. Novavax alleges that Gavi had failed to hold up its end of the bargain and buy the contractually obligated doses.

Importantly, Gavi has paid Novavax $700 million in the last two years, and its $350 million payment in 2021 accounted for a large fraction of the biotech's $1.1 billion in total revenue for the year.

Even more importantly, Gavi disputes Novavax's allegations. In the view of Gavi, there was little chance Novavax would have been able to manufacture the doses it was obligated to produce before the end of the year. Furthermore, a Gavi spokesperson told Reuters that the company hadn't delivered even one dose to the locations required by the purchasing contract. 

Regardless of which party's claims are factually correct, investors should probably take a long pause whenever a company and one of its major customers get into a public spat where basic details of a multi-hundred-million-dollar deal are in dispute. And that conflict with Gavi is only the latest instance in which Novavax's manufacturing capabilities have been called into serious question by its clients.