Moderna tempers 2023 COVID vaccine sales forecast

Analysts estimate over $100 million in sales for each of Moderna's new vaccines against RSV and flu, which also has yet to be approved, in 2024, according to LSEG data. Moderna's 2025 sales growth expectation is based on anticipated revenue from those shots, as well as from its forthcoming combination COVID-flu vaccine, Chief Financial Officer Jamey Mock said in an interview.

Moderna on Thursday said it expected 2023 revenue of at least $6 billion, tempering its forecast to reflect weaker demand for COVID-19 vaccines, but added it would return to sales growth in 2025 and break even the following year. The company reported third-quarter sales of $1.8 billion, topping analysts' estimates of $1.32 billion, according to LSEG data. Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is its lone marketed product.

Some $900 million of its quarterly revenue came from the U.S. and $800 million from international sales. 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. This was at the lower end of its earlier forecast of $6 billion to $8 billion.

"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. The company's shares slumped 11% in premarket trading following the forecast and 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 per share loss of $9.53 was much bigger than expectations of a $1.93 loss, according to LSEG data. The vaccine maker said the resizing would improve future cost of sales.

Concerns around waning demand for the COVID shots, Moderna's only commercial product, has dragged the company's shares nearly 58% this year. The stock is now les than a fifth of the record high hit during the peak of the pandemic two years ago. 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 Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said it expected $4 billion in revenue next year from sales of its COVID-19 shot, called Spikevax, and its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, which is not yet approved but expected to launch in 2024 based on positive data from a late-stage trial. Analysts estimate over $100 million in sales for each of Moderna's new vaccines against RSV and flu, which also has yet to be approved, in 2024, according to LSEG data.

Moderna's 2025 sales growth expectation is based on anticipated revenue from those shots, as well as from its forthcoming combination COVID-flu vaccine, Chief Financial Officer Jamey Mock said in an interview. "We believe 2024 is the low point, and we laid out some of the pieces to that. We're going to launch two or three new products on top of that in 2025, and have RSV out in 2024, and it'll continue to grow thereafter," he said.

Spikevax's U.S. market share increased to 45% from 36% in 2022, according to Moderna. Wall Street has been skeptical on the overall uptake of COVID-19 vaccines this fall and of Moderna's ability to hit its minimum $2 billion sales forecast for the commercial market, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a recent note.

Yee said he expected the number of COVID shots administered in the U.S. would hit 35 million to 40 million rather than the minimum of 50 million doses forecast by Moderna.