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.