Moderna Shipped 800 Million Covid-19 Vaccine Doses in 2021. Its Stock Keeps Falling.
Syringes with Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine.
Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images
Moderna said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday that it had shipped approximately 800 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, roughly in line with estimates that the company had put out late in the year.
In November, Moderna (ticker: MRNA) cut its expectations for deliveries of Covid-19 vaccine doses to between 700 million and 800 million, down from earlier estimates of between 800 million and 1 billion.
At the time, Moderna said the reduction in output for 2021 was due to longer delivery lead times for international shipments and to what it called a “temporary impact from expansion of fill/finish capacity and ramp up of product release to market.” The company said that some deliveries expected to be made in 2021 would come early in 2022.
The shareholder letter didn’t specify how many of the approximately 800 million doses shipped in 2021 were primary doses and how many were boosters. Moderna’s booster dose is half the size of its primary dose. In its November earnings presentation, the company had said that the 700 million to 800 million dose capacity for 2021 was based on a 100-microgram primary dose.
Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the shareholder letter.
Moderna stock dropped 7.5% on Monday, amid a selloff of Covid-19 vaccine stocks. The stock had a rocky back end in 2021, dropping 34% from the start of October through the end of the year. Of the 18 analysts tracked by FactSet with ratings on the stock, seven rate it a Buy or Overweight, while six rate it a Hold and five rate it a Sell or Underweight.
Moderna shares were down 3.6%, at $226.56, in recent trading. The S&P 500 was up 0.3%.
In early December, the company reported what it called positive data on an experimental flu vaccine, but that sent shares down. While the flu vaccine candidate significantly boosted antibody responses to the two most important flu strains, the antibody response it elicited appeared to be similar to Sanofi
‘s (SNY) Fluzone HD.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
