ome additional thoughts and comments on Moderna, its coronavirus vaccine, the stock’s valuation and Monday night’s $1.3 billion stock sale:
Of course, Moderna raised money. It was only one week ago that I described Moderna’s $23 billion enterprise value as “astonishingly high” for a company with no approved products and no appreciable revenue. Monday, it was $29 billion, with the stock reaching another all-time high of $80 per share, or four times the price from the beginning of the year.
I’ll say it again. Moderna has become biotech’s Tesla.
Moderna, ew.
Why the disgust? Because in the hours before Monday night’s financing, Moderna’s top executives engaged reporters in an all-out publicity tour to promote the first human results from a Phase 1 trial of its closely watched mRNA vaccine candidate against the novel coronavirus.
Chief Executive Stephane Bancel, Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks, and President Stephen Hoge were everywhere in the media on Monday, talking up the antibody response results from eight patients who each received two doses of the experimental vaccine, while declining to disclose actual clinical data.
And then, when the one-day coronavirus-vaccine promo tour was over, and Moderna’s stock price was 20% higher, the company dumped nearly 18 million shares into the market. Moderna carries a big-boy market valuation now, so it shouldn’t act like a biotech penny stock.
Who is buying Moderna at this inflated valuation? I asked around, and the most common response I received back was “generalist investors” — meaning institutional investors who don’t specialize in the biotech or pharma sector, and are therefore less valuation sensitive and more likely to buy into the optimism for a fast-developing coronavirus vaccine.
“#$!@ing idiots,” was the most colorful response I received from a biotech hedge fund manager. (He used the real curse word, of course.)
This is not to say biotech specialist investors can just ignore (or short) Moderna at will. (It’s also not to say that the need for a Covid-19 from Moderna or any biotech isn’t urgent.)
That said, due to its incredible outperformance, Moderna is now the largest holding — 4.5% — in the popular and tradable basket of biotech stocks known as the XBI. The XBI is at an all-time high — biotech stock prices are surging, if you haven’t noticed — so any fund manager who benchmarks their performance against the XBI, may have to own Moderna to outperform.
Is there a fundamental thesis that can justify Moderna’s current valuation? Some are trying. The simplest bull thesis argues that the early but positive results from the Moderna coronavirus vaccine help to further validate its entire mRNA research pipeline. Simply put, Moderna’s mRNA technology platform could be a big winner. If the coronavirus vaccine proves to be effective, then its other mRNA-based vaccines in clinical development, and possibly its mRNA-based drugs, will also be successful.
In case you were wondering, the world’s top-selling vaccine is Pfizer’s Prevnar, at $5.85 billion in sales last year. So, Moderna is trading at about five times Prevnar sales. That’s a lot, and shows you just how much success is already priced into Moderna’s valuation.
But the commercial potential for an effective coronavirus vaccine might make Prevnar look like a piker. Possibly true. Even with scant data, some analysts are forecasting sales of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine reaching $7-10 billion in the 2023-2025 time period.
Sanofi’s influenza vaccines generate about $2 billion in sales annually.
Morgan Stanley analysts project a “pandemic market” opportunity for coronavirus vaccines could be $10-30 billion in 2020-2022. Me: A $20 billion sales range is quite something… like a total guess?
Three more points on Moderna and the business of coronavirus vaccines.
1. There are three mRNA-based vaccines being developed. Moderna is in the lead, so it might reach the market first. But the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is not far behind. If one mRNA vaccine is successful, the odds are higher that the others will be successful, too. There will also be competition from other drug makers using different methods to conjure a coronavirus vaccine. Even if you assume Moderna is first, it will not be the only.
2. A coronavirus vaccine isn’t going to be hugely profitable. Johnson & Johnson has already committed to selling its in-development vaccine at cost; and has pledged to make 1 billion doses or more per year.
3. The U.S. government has committed close to $500 million to Moderna to fund and accelerate the development and testing of its coronavirus vaccine. It seems highly likely that, in exchange for the financial support, the government will ask — demand — that it receive doses at little or no cost.
Lastly, a word on politics: President Trump needs a successful coronavirus vaccine to boost his re-election odds. And it needs to come from an American company so that doses can be nationalized and produced exclusively for U.S. citizens, at least in the early stages of any vaccination program.
This is why Moderna is receiving so much attention and financial support from the U.S. government, including Trump’s decision to name pharma executive and Moderna director Moncef Slaoui as his coronavirus vaccine czar. Slaoui resigned from Moderna’s board when his appointment was announced last week, but the connection is no coincidence.
Where is all this heading? A fast-tracked decision by the FDA to grant Emergency Use Authorization to Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine sometime in the fall, but definitely before the November election. Call it the coronavirus October surprise.
Back in January, investors were barely paying attention to Moderna; today it is the most important drug maker in the world. Bancel will gladly ride Trump’s coattails, and by the fall, the stock could be trading at $100.