Moderna to Report First Quarterly Loss Since Debuting Covid-19 Vaccine

Moderna (MRNA), the Massachusetts-based company whose 2019 IPO was the largest-ever for a biotech firm, likely will report its first quarterly loss in two years as demand for Covid-19 vaccines, its only marketable product, dries up.

Moderna is expected to report a net loss of $648 million, or $1.64 per share, compared with net income of $3.66 billion, or $8.58 a share, in the year-ago quarter, according to analyst estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. Revenue is expected to fall 80% to $1.2 billion. Moderna reports first-quarter earnings before markets open Thursday.

Investors will be looking to see what is coming next from the company as demand for Covid-19 vaccines moderates.  

“We don’t believe that Moderna or the mRNA platform we are building is a one-trick pony,” CFO James Mock told the Financial Times. “It’s not just a respiratory vaccine business. It’s a latent vaccine business. It’s a personalized cancer vaccine business. It’s a rare disease business.”

Developing those drugs will be expensive. Analysts expect Moderna to report more than $1 billion in research costs in the first quarter, almost double what it spent in the same quarter a year ago.

According to Mock, Moderna is sitting on $18 billion in capital for development costs. It expects to spend between $6 billion and $8 billion of that over the next few years developing influenza, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines. These jabs, the focus of Moderna’s annual Vaccines Day in April, are expected to generate between $8 billion and $15 billion in annual revenue by 2027.

Moderna shares have fallen about 25% since the beginning of the year, underperforming both the S&P 500 (up 9%) and the S&P 500 Health Care Sector (down 1%).

The Key Metric

The key metric for Moderna will continue to be Covid-19 vaccine revenue, which has been declining since the fourth quarter of 2021. The company posted $6.93 billion in vaccine revenue in that quarter, compared with a forecast of $1 billion in the most recent quarter.