The Moderna Inc. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Modern Monday lowered its 2025 sales forecast by about $1 billion due to some potential headwinds later this year as the biotech company continues to cut costs and expand its portfolio.
Moderna now expects its 2025 revenue to be between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, most of which will be generated in the second half of the year. The majority of these sales will come from Moderna’s Covid vaccine and the recently launched respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, according to a release.
The forecast is down from the prior forecast range of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion issued in September. At the time, the company said it expected to break even on an operating cash basis in 2028 – pushed back from 2026 – with revenue of $6 billion.
Moderna shares plunged 18% in pre-market trading Monday.
“As we move toward 2025, we anticipate a handful of uncertainties,” Jamey Mock, Moderna’s chief financial officer, told CNBC. “From this period onwards, we expect there to be headwinds. They could be tailwinds, but at the moment we consider them headwinds.”
Mock highlighted four factors that could weigh on sales, including increased competition in the Covid market. He said Moderna’s share of the U.S. retail Covid vaccine market fell to 40% at the end of 2024, from 48% in 2023, and the company is bracing for a further decline this year.
He noted Sanofi will co-market Novavax‘s Covid vaccine worldwide under a new deal, which could potentially make this vaccine more competitive.
Mock said the second factor is declining vaccination rates, which overall were down about 7% in the U.S. retail market in fall 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. The final two factors are the timing of manufacturing contracts with a handful of countries and the uncertainty. around what advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will recommend for RSV revaccination.
But Mock noted that the company plans to reduce cash spending by $1 billion in 2025, with plans for an additional $500 million in reductions for 2026.
“We take the amount necessary to preserve our cash flow,” Mock said. “We are excited to invest and diversify our portfolio.”
The announcement comes as Moderna charts a path forward after rapidly declining demand for its Covid vaccine, its only commercially available product until its RSV vaccine entered the market last year. It also precedes Moderna’s presentation at the annual conference JPMorgan Healthcare Conferenceone of the largest gatherings of healthcare executives in the world and a hotbed of deal activity for the industry.
Revenue from Moderna’s two shots met their 2024 forecast, coming in at $3 billion to $3.1 billion. In November, the company said its updated Covid vaccine received approval in the United States three weeks earlier than the previous iteration of the vaccine in 2023.
Still, these sales represent a sharp decline from the $6.7 billion booked by Moderna’s Covid vaccine in 2023 and the $18 billion generated in 2022, as fewer people rolled up their sleeves for vaccines updated.
Moderna plans to strengthen its portfolio with 10 new product approvals over the next three years, including a combination shot targeting Covid and flu and a “next generation” Covid shot. The company said Monday it could get three approvals in 2025 alone.
The company is betting on a pipeline built around its messenger RNA platform, which is the technology used in its Covid vaccine and RSV vaccine.
