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In many ways, the pandemic is becoming a faded memory. With that, a major pandemic star -- biotech Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) -- also seems to be disappearing from the world's attention. The company's stock is down a headache-inducing 36% year to date, compared to the S&P 500 index's mere 9% slide.
This doesn't mean Moderna is inactive; in fact, it's quite the opposite. Let's see if that, combined with its considerable price weakness, makes it something of a stealth buy today.
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A powerhouse during the pandemic
Moderna shot to prominence near the end of 2021, when its Spikevax coronavirus vaccine received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Spikevax was not the first COVID jab to earn such approval -- that honor belonged to Pfizer and BioNTech's Comirnaty. Still, seemingly overnight it made Moderna a near-household name to a population enduring lockdowns and stay-ins as the disease spread across the world.
The two first-mover vaccines both sold briskly. Moderna, a young company compared to Pfizer, became a hot ticket for investors as its revenue ballooned. The top line soared from $803 million in 2020 to more than $18.4 billion the following year. Headline net income for the latter was $12.2 billion.
But what have you done for me lately?
There was a sleeper problem lurking under all this: Moderna didn't have any other products to at least partly offset the inevitable slide of Spikevax sales as the pandemic eased.
It wasn't because the company was misguided or lazy. Even the most efficient biotechs and pharmaceutical companies can take years to develop their wares in the multistep process leading up to a potential regulatory nod.
Moderna has been diligently plugging away since its founding on exploring uses for the messenger RNA (mRNA) based technology that drives Spikevax. It's harnessing this to develop vaccines for an admirably wide range of disorders, including mononucleosis, Lyme disease, and several types of cancer.
Many of these are in mid- or even late-stage clinical trials, so we shouldn't be surprised if new regulatory approvals are earned before long.
Again, though, the development process is lengthy, and so far, the only other Moderna vaccine to earn FDA approval has been mRESVIA, a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) jab that was given the FDA green light in mid-2024. Disappointingly, mRESVIA's rollout was greeted with weaker-than-expected sales.