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Moderna is developing two vaccines for the fall, one for the US and one for international markets.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The maker of the Covid-19 vaccine
Modern
reported earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations, sending its shares up 4.6% in premarket trading.
The company reported sales for the second quarter of $4.7 billion, better than analysts’ consensus estimate of $4.1 billion, according to FactSet.
Diluted earnings were $5.24 per share, well above analysts’ consensus estimate of $4.58.
“Despite the slowing economy and challenges in the biotech industry,
Modern
is uniquely positioned: a platform to drive scale and speed in new drug research, a strong balance sheet of $18 billion in cash and an agile, mission-driven team of more than 3,400 people and growing,” the company’s CEO, Stephan Bansel, said. it said in a statement. “We will continue to invest and grow as we have never been more optimistic about Moderna’s future.” “
Selling expenses were higher than expected at $1.4 billion, compared with analysts’ consensus estimate of $899 million.
Moderna (ticker: MRNA ) did not change its guidance for the full year, saying it now has $21 billion in advance purchase agreements for deliveries in 2022. That’s despite the company’s $1.7 billion deal announced with the US government in Friday. Moderna said the figure was adjusted to account for doses provided by COVAX, the World Health Organization-affiliated organization that buys Covid-19 vaccines for low-income countries that have not been distributed due to lack of demand.
Moderna said fourth-quarter vaccine sales are expected to be higher than third-quarter sales.
The company said it had cash, cash equivalents and investments of $18.1 billion, up from $17.6 billion at the end of the year, and announced it would buy back $3 billion of its own stock.
As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was down 37% this year, while
fell by 14%.
On a call to discuss earnings, Bansel responded to questions about whether the company is considering mergers and acquisitions as it sits on a big windfall from a Covid-19 vaccine. “We have not acquired a company at this stage,” Bansel said. “We see this as how do we expand the company’s potential to fulfill its mission of making innovative medicines?”
Bansel said Moderna’s business development teams are “extremely busy looking at a lot of things” and said that while the company plans to work only on nucleic acid-based drugs, it will look beyond mRNA.
“We won’t be shy if we find big assets,” he said. “There are a lot of assets that are very early stage. There are a lot of assets that don’t really fit the company’s strategy.”
“The acquisition is not an end in itself,” he said.
Moderna is currently developing two vaccines for the fall, one for the US market that mixes the original vaccine with a version targeting Omicron’s BA.4/BA.5 subvariants, and one for international markets that mixes the original vaccine with a version that targets to the BA.1 sub-variant.
Write to Josh Nathan-Cazis at [email protected]