AstraZeneca sold its stake in Moderna for more than $1 billion as it looks to develop its own pipeline of drugs.
AstraZeneca AZN,
The cash from the the sale of AstraZeneca’s holding will help shore up the Anglo-Swedish drug maker’s finances, as it develops its own pipeline of drugs and aims to complete its $39 billion takeover of Boston-based Alexion Pharmaceuticals ALXN. That deal will expand its foothold in the lucrative field of rare-diseases drugs and boost sales of drugs in new markets, particularly China.
“During 2020, AstraZeneca sold a proportion of its equity portfolio receiving consideration of $1.3 billion, a large proportion of which related to the disposal of its full holding in Moderna,” AstraZeneca said in its 2020 annual report.
Shares in the Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna MRNA, which listed on Nasdaq in 2018, soared more than five times in value in 2020 after the U.S. biotech started development of its two-shot COVID-19 vaccine, which has been authorized for emergency use in the U.S., the European Union and the U.K., among other countries.
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Last week, Moderna 0A45,
Read: Moderna reports $570 million in revenue for first time driven by sales of COVID-19 vaccine
Moderna MRNA,
The company’s stock, which is up more than 48% so far this year, was up 2.45% in premarket trading in New York on Monday.
The sale of its Moderna stake comes eight years after AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot made a $240 million investment in Moderna to gain access to the startup’s know-how in manipulating RNA, or ribonucleic acid, which helps create proteins inside cells.
Read: AstraZeneca made a bet on Moderna back in 2013. Here’s what it’s worth now
Under the terms of that agreement, AstraZeneca AZN,
AstraZeneca 0A4J,
Read: AstraZeneca profit, revenue up, guides for growth
Shares in AstraZeneca, which have fallen by almost 4.8% so far this year, were flat in London trading on Monday.
Last week, AstraZeneca said that it is still aiming to supply 180 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, to the EU in the second quarter of the year, as the 27-member bloc continues to grapple with supply issues.
The sale of AstraZeneca’s stake in Moderna was first reported by The Times.