Moderna cuts sales forecast by $1 billion for 2025

Modern on Monday cut its 2025 sales forecast by about $1 billion due to potential headwinds later this year as the biotech company continues to cut costs and expand its portfolio.

Moderna now expects revenue of $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion in 2025, most of which will come in the second half of the year. Most of those sales will come from Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine and the recently released vaccine against respiratory syncytial virussaid the release.

The management is inferior to the previous one forecast in the $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion range issued in September. At the time, the company said it was waiting break even on an operating cash basis in 2028 — brought forward from 2026 — with revenue of $6 billion.

Moderna shares fell 18% in premarket trading on Monday. Other vaccine stocks also fell, with Novavax down 6% before the market opened, BioNTech down 3% and Pfizer down slightly.

“As we approach 2025, there are several uncertainties that we plan to address,” Moderna CFO Jamie Mock told CNBC. “Starting this time frame, we plan for them to be a headwind. They can be tailwinds, but right now we’re looking at them as headwinds.”

Mock pointed to four factors that could affect sales, including increased competition in the Covid market. He said Moderna’s share of the US retail market for Covid vaccines fell to 40% at the end of 2024 from 48% in 2023, and the company is poised for another drop this year.

He noted Sanofi will be jointly commercialized NovavaxCovid vaccine worldwide under a new deal that could potentially make the vaccine more competitive.

Mock said the second factor is a drop in vaccination rates, which overall are down about 7% in the U.S. retail market in the fall of 2024. compared to the same period in 2023. The final two factors are the timing of multi-country manufacturing contracts and the uncertainty surrounding what CDC advisors will recommend for RSV boosters.

But Mock noted that the company expects to reduce cash costs by $1 billion in 2025, with plans for an additional $500 million in cost reductions in 2026.

“We’re taking the right amount of spending to keep our money,” Mock said. “We are excited to invest and diversify our portfolio.”

The announcement comes as Moderna navigates a path forward after a sharp decline in demand for its Covid vaccine, its only commercially available product until its RSV vaccine hit the market last year. It also comes ahead of Moderna’s annual presentation JPMorgan Healthcare Conferenceone of the largest gatherings of healthcare executives in the world and the place to do business in the industry.

Moderna’s two-shot revenue hit its 2024 forecast of around $3 billion to $3.1 billion. In November, the company announced an updated shot from Covid benefited from receiving US approval three weeks earlier than the previous iteration shot in 2023.

However, these sales represent a sharp drop compared to 6.7 billion dollars that Moderna’s Covid jab was booked in 2023, and the $18 billion it brought in in 2022 as fewer people rolled up their sleeves for the updated jabs.

Moderna plans to expand its portfolio with 10 new product approvals over the next three years, including a combination Covid-flu vaccine and a “next-generation” Covid vaccine. On Monday, the company said it could get three permits in 2025 alone.

The company is betting on a pipeline built around its messenger RNA platform, which is the technology used in its Covid vaccine and RSV vaccine.