Moderna lowers 2025 sales forecast by $1 billion

Moderna on Monday lowered its 2025 sales guidance by roughly $1 billion as a result of a number of potential headwinds later this 12 months, because the biotech company continues to chop costs and expand its portfolio.

Moderna now expects 2025 revenue of between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, most of which can are available the second half of the 12 months. The vast majority of those sales will come from Moderna’s Covid shot and newly launched vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, in accordance with a release.

The guidance is down from a previous forecast range of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion issued in September. On the time, the corporate said it expects to interrupt even on an operating money basis in 2028 — pushed back from 2026 — with $6 billion in revenue.

Shares of Moderna closed nearly 17% lower Monday. Other vaccine stocks also fell, with Novavax and BioNTech each ending greater than 7% lower.

“As we head into 2025, there are a handful of uncertainties that we’re planning for,” Moderna CFO Jamey Mock told CNBC. “As of this time period, we’re planning for them to be headwinds. They might be tail winds, but straight away we’re seeing them as headwinds.” 

Mock pointed to 4 aspects that might weigh on sales, including increased competition within the Covid market. He said Moderna’s share of the U.S. retail marketplace for Covid shots fell to 40% at the top of 2024 from 48% in 2023, and the corporate is preparing for one more decline this 12 months. 

He noted Sanofi will co-commercialize Novavax‘s Covid vaccine worldwide under a recent agreement, which could potentially make that shot more competitive. 

Mock said the second factor is falling vaccination rates, which were down around 7% overall within the U.S. retail market in fall 2024 compared with the identical time in 2023. The last two aspects are timing around manufacturing contracts with a handful of nations, and uncertainty around what advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will recommend for RSV revaccination. 

But Mock noted that the corporate expects to scale back 2025 money cost expenses by $1 billion, with plans for added 2026 cost reductions of $500 million. 

“We’re taking the fitting amount of cost to preserve our money,” Mock said. “We’re excited to take a position and diversify our portfolio.” 

The announcement comes as Moderna charts a path forward after the rapid decline in demand for its Covid vaccine, its only commercially available product until its RSV shot entered the market last 12 months. It also comes ahead of Moderna’s presentation on the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, one among the most important gatherings of health-care executives on this planet and a hotbed of deals activity for the industry. 

Revenue from Moderna’s two shots met its forecast for 2024, coming in at around $3 billion to $3.1 billion. In November, the corporate said its updated Covid shot benefited from gaining approval within the U.S. three weeks sooner than the previous iteration of the shot did in 2023. 

Still, those sales represent a steep drop off from the $6.7 billion that Moderna’s Covid shot booked in 2023 and the $18 billion it generated in 2022, as fewer people rolled up their sleeves for updated jabs. 

Moderna plans to beef up its portfolio with 10 recent product approvals over the following three years, including a mix shot targeting Covid and the flu and a “next-generation” Covid shot. The corporate on Monday said it could see three approvals in 2025 alone. 

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