Good morning.
You might think of Moderna as the COVID shot company. But CFO Jamey Mock has another narrative he wants people to know about—and the story goes way beyond shots.
I sat down with Mock yesterday ahead of the biotechnology company’s annual R&D Day, which takes place in New York City. Moderna, founded in 2010, focuses on messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines.
“The way we think about it is that mRNA is the information molecule of life,” Mock explains. “There's hundreds of thousands in your body every single day. And they create proteins that help fight any kind of disease. It's actually what your body does all the time.” When the company was created, the thought was they'd be able to use mRNA technology for treatments of a range of diseases, he says. “That's the whole premise of investing in our mRNA platform,” Mock says. He joined Moderna as CFO in September 2022, coming from PerkinElmer, a life sciences and diagnostics company, where he was also a finance chief.
In 2019 Moderna reported revenues of $60 million, and by 2022 made its debut on the Fortune 500 with over $18 billion in revenue, boosted by its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during a time when it was in demand. Moderna landed at No. 211 on this year's Fortune 500 list with $19.3 billion in revenue. A competitor in the COVID vaccine space, Pfizer, landed at No. 38 on the list, with $100.3 billion in revenue.
Moderna is expanding the scope of the mRNA platform. The company expects to add $10 billion to $15 billion in annual sales five years after launching new products in oncology, rare, and latent diseases by 2028. This is in addition to the previously announced $8 billion to $15 billion of expected sales from the respiratory franchise (COVID, RSV and flu) in 2027, according to the company. Moderna plans on investing approximately $25 billion in research and development from 2024 through 2028.
Regarding oncology, Moderna announced on Monday a multi-year collaboration with biotechnology company Immatics NV, on a variety of products, including antibodies produced through mRNA and cancer vaccines. Moderna will pay Immatics $120 million upfront. And payments could exceed $1.7 billion if the work reaches certain goals.
“We view Immatics as a leader in T cell Engaging Receptor technology,” Mock says. “And that's just another way to invoke the immune system to fight cancer.”
COVID vaccine update
But amid rising COVID cases and hospitalizations across the country, Moderna certainly isn't done with vaccines just yet. On Monday, Moderna and Pfizer received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for updated COVID-19 does. Moderna will begin shipping to vaccination sites across the U.S., with the updated vaccines expected to be available in the coming days. The company expects that the U.S. demand for the vaccine would reach 50 to 100 million doses in the fall season.
Moderna continues to expect 2023 COVID sales of $6 to $8 billion. “In the first half of 2023, we had already generated $2 billion in sales, and that puts the second half at a $4 to $6 billion revenue range for us,” Mock explains. And $2 billion was already committed with global contracts, he says. So that leaves you with a range of $2 to $4 billion, mostly in the United States, for the rest of the year,” Mock says.
How much will the vaccine cost? “It’s a $129 gross price,” Mock says. “We then give discounts to some of our partners and our end consumers across the globe that bring the price down. But I think what's important, particularly for the U.S. consumer, and actually most countries across the globe, is there’s zero out-of-pocket costs for any consumer.”
The $129 dose will be free to all consumers in the U.S. and most other countries, via either insurance or access through government programs.
Mock plans to get his booster once it’s available, he says.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
