Vials containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. [Image from Wikipedia]
MRNA shares were up 11.7% at $161.51 per share in midday trading today. MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — was up 1.1%.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company posted profits of $4.9 billion, or $11.29 per share, on sales of $7.2 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2021, for a massive bottom-line gain from losses of $272 million in this period last year on sales growth of more than 12 times the revenues produced in the fourth quarter of 2020 ($571 million).
Moderna’s earnings per share of $11.29 came in $1.39 ahead of expectations on Wall Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $6.8 billion.
Product sales for Moderna totaled $6.9 billion, with the sale of 297 million doses of the company’s Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine, which just last month received full FDA approval.
“Spikevax is now approved in more than 70 countries around the world protecting hundreds of millions of people and real-world evidence from multiple independent studies has confirmed its strong effectiveness,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a news release. “In 2021, we delivered 807 million doses with approximately 25% of those doses going to low- and middle-income countries, and we will continue to scale in 2022 to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Bancel added that the company’s growth includes doubling the size of its team, reaching 3,000 members around the world. Moderna also has plans to scale to 21 commercial subsidiaries around the world, with four new locations in Asia and six new locations in Europe.
Moderna did not provide a financial guidance range but confirmed that it has signed 2022 advanced purchase agreements worth approximately $19 billion, plus approximately $3 billion in options including for any potential updated COVID-19 vaccine booster candidates.
The company said it expects the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 to evolve into an endemic phase in 2022, meaning expectations are that sales will likely be larger in the second half of 2022 than in the first half.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery, Drug Discovery and Development, Immunology, Infectious Disease
