Moderna forecasts weaker sales as COVID vaccine demand wanes

Moderna said on Thursday its 2023 sales would only hit the low end of its previous forecast, reflecting weaker demand for COVID-19 vaccines.

Moderna said on Thursday its 2023 sales would only hit the low end of its previous forecast, reflecting weaker demand for COVID-19 vaccines and its shares plummeted over 16% in early trade.

The vaccine maker also pushed back the launch date of its flu shot, which it had previously said it expected to be available in 2024, into 2025.

Concerns around waning demand for COVID vaccines has led to a nearly 58 per cent drop in the company’s shares this year. The stock is now less than a fifth of the record high hit during the peak of the pandemic two years ago.

Moderna said the $6 billion 2023 revenue forecast was based on the expectation that at least 50 million COVID-19 vaccines would be administered in the United States. Moderna’s COVID-19vaccine is its lone marketed product and the company had earlier forecast revenue of $6 billion to $8 billion.

The company said it would return to sales growth in 2025, by which time it would have launched new vaccines against flu, and break even the following year.

“We expected the high end was too lofty and implied Q4 (fourth-quarter COVID vaccine sales) after today’s beat looks reasonable,” Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a note.

So far, more than 15 million people in the U.S. have received an updated COVID-19 shot, including Pfizer’s rival vaccine, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, compared to around 23 million by this time in last year’s campaign, which started 10 days earlier.

The company posted a third-quarter net loss of $3.6 billion, driven by non-cash charges of $3.1 billion related to manufacturing capacity resizing and tax reserve. The resizing,included scaling down production by contract manufacturer Lonza, will improve future cost of sales, Moderna said.