modern Third-quarter profit unexpectedly reported Thursday, beating Wall Street expectations as the company carried out its cost-cutting efforts and sold higher-than-expected sales of its COVID-19 vaccine.
The biotech company’s third-quarter net income was $13 million, or 3 cents per share. This compares with a net loss of $3.63 billion, or 9.53 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Moderna is cutting expenses, recently announcing a goal of $1.1 billion in savings by 2027 as it tries to recover from a rapid decline in business due to the coronavirus pandemic. This is the first quarter that Moderna has marketed a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, its second commercial product.
The company plans to apply for approval of its experimental “next-generation” COVID-19 vaccine and a combination vaccine against COVID-19 and influenza by the end of the year. Moderna is also expected to apply this year to expand approval of its RSV vaccine to high-risk adults ages 18 to 59.
Moderna said on Thursday its latest Covid vaccine was approved in the United States three weeks earlier than the last shot in 2023, allowing the biotech company to “meet demand more efficiently.” The company is able to ship doses to pharmacies and health care providers and get them into the hands of more patients faster.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in an interview, “I think the earlier launch and steeper growth have driven higher sales of the new crown vaccine.” Bancel noted that in the first week of the vaccine rollout, the company shipped twice as much product globally as it did in 2023.
He added, “This was a quarter of significant cost reduction and we will continue to do so.”
What’s this Moderna reports third-quarter results Compared to Wall Street expectations, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 3 cents, expected loss of $1.90
- income: $1.86 billion vs. $1.25 billion expected
Moderna’s third-quarter sales were $1.86 billion, only slightly higher than the $1.83 billion in revenue in the same period last year. The vast majority of that came from Covid vaccines, with $1.2 billion in U.S. sales and about $600 million in international markets.
The company’s third-quarter revenue also included $10 million in U.S. sales of its RSV vaccine, which was approved in May. Moderna said sales of the vaccine were lower than expected because it was approved and recommended by regulators late in the contract season, when many vaccine distributors had already filled orders.
Analysts had expected sales of $132 million for the RSV vaccine, according to estimates compiled by StreetAccount. Moderna’s RSV vaccine has so far been approved by the United States, European Union, Norway, Iceland and Qatar.
The company reiterated its full-year 2024 product sales guidance of approximately $3 billion to $3.5 billion. Last quarter, Moderna slashed its forecasts, citing lower expected sales in Europe, a “competitive environment” for respiratory vaccines in the U.S. and the possibility of international revenue being delayed until 2025.
Moderna’s shares have fallen nearly 50% this year as investors ponder the company’s future path after the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is betting on a pipeline built around its messenger RNA platform, the technology used in its Covid vaccine and RSV vaccine.
The biotech company currently has 45 products in development and expects to bring 10 of these products to market within the next three years.
Moderna is developing products such as a standalone flu vaccine, a personalized cancer vaccine in partnership with Merck and a vaccine against latent viruses.
Cost of sales in the third quarter was US$514 million, a 77% decrease from the same period last year. This includes a $214 million write-down on unused COVID-19 vaccine doses and a $27 million charge related to the company’s production scale-down.
Compared with the same period in 2023, research and development expenses fell 2% to $1.1 billion.
Meanwhile, selling, general and administrative expenses for the period fell 36% to $281 million compared with the third quarter of 2023.
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