Moderna Raises Hope, Concern, With Forecast on Covid-19 Vaccine Sales

At the same time, however, the company said that $1 billion of Covid-19 vaccines originally intended to be delivered in 2023 under advance-purchase agreements had been deferred until 2024. That suggests a possible drop in demand in countries outside of the U.S., a potentially worrying sign.

The company also cut back sharply on its previous estimate of the size of the U.S. commercial Covid-19 vaccine market. It said it now expects between 50 million and 100 million doses to be sold overall this year, down from an earlier estimate of 100 million doses.

“The fact of the matter is in this first transition year to a commercial endemic market, it is difficult to accurately predict market volumes,” said Moderna chief commercial officer Arpa Garay on an investor call Thursday morning.

The company now expects commercial Covid-19 vaccine sales of between $2 billion and $4 billion in the U.S. and a handful of other markets in the second half of the year.

Moderna shares were up 0.6% Thursday morning. The company reported a diluted loss of $3.62 per share in the second quarter, slightly less bad than the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of a loss of $3.93 per share. Revenue was $344 million, compared with the consensus forecast of $308 million.

Worries over the company’s plummeting Covid-19 vaccine revenue have hurt Moderna shares, despite a promising pipeline of medicines in late stage development. Moderna shares are down nearly 40% this year, while the S&P 500 is up nearly 20%.

Moderna sits on the brink of a new phase in the market for Covid-19 vaccines, the product that catapulted the company to fame during the pandemic. How much demand remains for the jabs three years after their launch isn’t clear. Since the first injections were given in late 2020, all Covid-19 vaccines in the U.S. had been paid for by the federal government, but that ended earlier this year. The government is currently working through its remaining supply.

Commercial sales of the vaccine are expected to start this fall, when the company launches an updated version of the vaccine, which targets the XBB.1.5 strain. Moderna says it has supplies ready to ship once the Food and Drug Administration approves the new version.

Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine competitor
Pfizer
(ticker: PFE), in its earnings presentation on Tuesday, emphasized the uncertainty in the U.S. Covid-19 vaccine market, saying that uptake so far this year had been below expectations.

Moderna’s Garay said that the pullback to an estimated overall market of between 50 million and 100 million Covid-19 shots came after Australia saw a booster vaccination rate of just 19% in recommended populations in its 2023 Covid-19 season, which just ended.

While its Covid-19 vaccine became one of the best-selling medicines of all time, clocking $18.4 billion in sales in 2022, Moderna has no other marketed products. Analysts expect $7.1 billion in sales this year, according to FactSet.

Important Modena pipeline programs include a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, which could launch in 2024, and would compete with new RSV vaccines from Pfizer and
GSK
(GSK). The company is also expecting new data on its messenger RNA-based influenza vaccine later this year. It recently launched a Phase 3 study in collaboration with
Merck
(MRK) of its promising cancer treatment, mRNA-4157.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]