Moderna, Inc (MRNA) shares fall 6.5% on Thursday after they reported a loss in sales and the company cut back on the production of its COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, due to its weaning demand.
Moderna posted a Q3 2023 loss after tax of $3.6 billion.
Its revenue sunk by 46% year-on-year to $1.83 billion which the company has blamed on the decrease in vaccine sales.
The company noted that much of the decline was due to its cutting back on the production of the Covid 19 vaccines and tax evaluation allowance.
Following the release of its quarterly report, Moderna shares fell to a three-year low.
Moderna’s Chief Executive Officer, Stéphane Bancel, speaking to CNBC explained that Moderna has significantly resized its manufacturing infrastructure to make its Covid-19 franchise profitable for 2024 and beyond.
- He noted, “During the pandemic, we were obsessed about scaling up manufacturing to make as many doses as we could to help as many people as we could. And now that we’re moving into an endemic setting, it is important to resize the company,”
What you should know
Moderna is a pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant popular for its vaccines, especially the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, is approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 88 countries and approved for 70 trials in 24 countries.
In Nigeria, Spikevax was one of the 7 approved Covid 19 vaccines for use.
In October, Moderna had the poorest performance within the S&P 500. They cautioned about the uncertainty surrounding the demand for COVID-19 vaccines for the current year.
This warning came shortly after Pfizer reduced its guidance, primarily attributing it to the impact of COVID-19 products.
The company anticipates achieving around $4 billion in revenue in 2024. However, the sales projections for 2024 have come in below analysts’ expectations.
The company expects that most of the revenue will come in the second half of the year due to sales from its Covid-19 shot and its Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine which is expected to launch in 2024 and has shown 82.4% effectiveness to RSV lower respiratory tract diseases in adults.
