Tuesday, March 26, 2024, at Moderna’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Adam Glanzman Bloomberg | Getty Images
moderna The biotech company on Monday revised down its 2025 revenue outlook by about $1 billion, citing the possibility of some headwinds later this year as it continues to cut costs and expand its portfolio.
Moderna currently expects 2025 sales to be between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, most of which it expects to occur in the second half of this year. The majority of these sales came from Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and the newly launched respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, according to the release.
This guidance has been revised down from the prior range of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion announced in September. At the time, the company said it expected to reach breakeven on an operating cash basis in 2028, with sales of $6 billion, delayed from 2026.
Moderna shares closed down nearly 17% on Monday. Other vaccine stocks also fell, with Novavax and BioNTech both ending down more than 7%.
“There is some uncertainty in our plans for 2025,” Moderna Chief Financial Officer Jamie Mock told CNBC. “Right now, we’re planning for it to be a headwind. It could be a tailwind, but we’re looking at it as a headwind at this point.”
Mock pointed to four factors that could weigh on sales, including increased competition in the coronavirus market. He said Moderna’s share of the U.S. retail market for coronavirus vaccines has fallen from 48% in 2023 to 40% by the end of 2024, and the company is bracing for further declines this year.
he pointed out sanofi We will jointly commercialize NovavaxCOVID-19 vaccinations are being carried out around the world under new agreements, which could make inoculations even more competitive.
Mock said the second factor was lower vaccination rates, with the overall U.S. retail market in fall 2024 down about 7% compared to the same period in 2023. The final two factors are the timing and uncertainty of manufacturing agreements with a small number of countries. What Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisors recommend about revaccination for respiratory syncytial virus.
But Mock noted that the company plans to reduce its cash expenses by $1 billion in 2025 and another $500 million in 2026.
“We are paying appropriate costs to protect our cash,” Mock said. “We are excited to invest and diversify our portfolio.”
The announcement comes as Moderna plots its future direction after demand for its COVID-19 vaccine, which was the company’s only commercially available product until the RSV vaccine hit the market last year, plummeted. . The announcement also comes ahead of Moderna’s presentation at the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, one of the world’s largest gatherings of healthcare executives and a hotbed of deal activity for the industry. will be carried out.
Revenue from Moderna’s two shots met expectations for 2024, coming in at $3.1 billion, up from about $3 billion. The company said in November that its latest coronavirus vaccine benefited from being approved three weeks earlier in the U.S. than the previous vaccine, which was approved in 2023.
Still, with fewer people rolling up their sleeves for the latest jab, those sales could be much higher than the $6.7 billion Moderna’s COVID-19 record in 2023 and the $180 billion it generated in 2022. This is a significant decrease from the billion dollars.
Moderna plans to strengthen its portfolio with 10 new product approvals over the next three years, including a combination vaccine for COVID-19 and influenza and a “next generation” COVID-19 vaccine. The company said on Monday that it could receive three approvals in 2025 alone.
The company is betting on a pipeline built around its Messenger RNA platform. The messenger RNA platform is the technology used in the coronavirus and RSV vaccines.