Covid Vaccine Makers' Stocks Crash as Sales Drop off a Cliff

Moderna and BioNTech shares both fell to their lowest price in years on Monday as the companies behind the most widely-used mRNA COVID-19 vaccines grapple with investor disappointment with crashing revenues. Forbes has the key points:

BioNTech and Moderna’s stocks fell 8% and 6%, respectively, a decline spurred by BioNTech’s earnings report revealing the German firm’s sales fell 95% year-over-year last quarter.

Moderna’s fresh decline came after it reported a 93% annual decline in quarterly revenues in its own earnings release Thursday.

Moderna’s $101.20 close Monday was its lowest since November 2020, while BioNTech’s $98.50 close was its lowest since March 2021.

BioNTech, which developed a Covid vaccine with Pfizer, said Monday it expects to generate $5.5 billion in Covid vaccine sales this year, a 70% decline from 2022, while Moderna’s $6 billion to $8 billion in forecasted Covid jab sales is similarly about two-thirds below its $18 billion of revenue in the unit last year.

The stock crashes moved against broader market gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 408-point, or 1.2%, rally its strongest since June 2nd.

Alex Berenson says it shows Wall Street is “finally in on the joke“.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of medical billionaires.

Investors are voting on the failure of mRNA technology with their feet, fleeing the stocks of Moderna and BioNTech, the two companies that had the greatest wins on the mRNA Covid jabs.

In 2021 and 2022, Moderna and BioNTech rode Covid to tens of billions of dollars in profits. That gravy train is over.

Today, shares in Moderna and BioNTech fell below $100 a share for the first time since the jabs came to market in 2020, plunging almost 10% after BioNTech reported weak second-quarter sales and said it would reduce its planned research spending.

Both companies are down almost 80% from their 2021 peaks. Pfizer, which markets BioNTech’s mRNA jab and shares profits equally with BioNTech, has also fallen, though not as much, since Pfizer has non-mRNA products.

Behind the plunge: demand for Covid shots has fallen off a cliff worldwide and shows no signs of recovering. Last month, Germany said it expected to throw out 200 million expired shots, more than the total number it has administered.

A few months ago, Pfizer predicted that 100 million Covid jabs would be administered in the United States in 2023. Pfizer’s executives no doubt expected that estimate was conservative, given that publicly traded companies would much rather surprise investors with good news than bad news.

But Pfizer disclosed last week that only about 12 million shots have been given so far – and most came very early in the year. “The 12.4 million doses are behind our earlier projections,” Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla acknowledged on a conference call last week. (Full disclosure: I am suing Bourla as part of Berenson v. Biden.)

Meanwhile, efforts to expand mRNA technology to jabs to prevent the flu and RSV are faltering. Large clinical trials suggest that the mRNA shots for those illnesses cause serious side effects at the same rate as they do for Covid.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that NHS flu jabs and Covid boosters will be axed for adults under 65 this winter as the health service attempts to “go back to normal”.

The Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is expected to set out plans on Tuesday which will mean 12 million people aged 50 to 64 are no longer eligible for free vaccines.

The rollout is also expected to start later than normal for those who are given jabs, with the drive not set to begin until October.

The vaccination drive usually starts in early September in an attempt to ensure sufficient protection against an early flu season.

Health officials said the later start would ensure that the vulnerable are protected in the depths of winter when viruses are most likely to spread.

Is that an admission of very short efficacy, if they have to give it in October to ensure it still works in December? Looks like it.