Moderna breakthrough brings back memories of pandemic mania

{"text":[[{"start":4.1,"text":"Moderna made its name in infectious diseases and, ever since the pandemic, it has been desperate to find a new area of speciality. On Wednesday, it did: its mRNA-based melanoma vaccine, jointly developed with Merck, doesn’t just offer a potentially massive market itself, but may also lead to breakthroughs for other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney. "}],[{"start":26.799999999999997,"text":"The Massachusetts-based company will need a number of these to pan out to justify its new, more than doubled, market capitalisation of nearly $60bn. "}],[{"start":36.699999999999996,"text":"Moderna needed the break: its revenue had fallen from almost $20bn in 2022, on the success of its Covid-19 vaccine, to $2bn last year. The second Trump administration and its health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been less hospitable to vaccines, especially those based on the novel mRNA technology. But cancer treatments are a big market, potentially highly lucrative and less likely to draw political and social controversy. "}],[{"start":65.14999999999999,"text":"The melanoma breakthrough, which uses mRNA technology to create a medicine designed specifically for each individual’s cancer, comes at a good time for shareholders. Moderna’s cash balance had drifted down from a peak of nearly $11bn four years ago to just $5bn now. With its stock price up, the company could seek to sell new shares to bridge its finances until the melanoma drug reaches commercialisation. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":90,"text":"Still, investors are now baking a lot of upside into its stock. Analysts had valued Moderna on a sum-of-the-parts basis between its cash position and the “probability of success” across its portfolio in oncology, rare diseases and infectious diseases such as Covid, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. However, the price that Moderna has reached this week exceeds even the rosiest upside scenarios. Bernstein analysts, for instance, are modelling additional earnings of $235mn from the melanoma drug six years after its launch. The company is currently lossmaking. "}],[{"start":123.5,"text":"A bigger prize would be the application of this technical breakthrough to other cancers — worth as much as $30bn in equity value according to analysts at RBC. Even after the company’s shares pulled back on Thursday, it is still up more than that. The investor mania this week resembles the sentiment at the peak of the Covid vaccine in 2021. "}],[{"start":144.55,"text":"Still, Moderna has now found its post-pandemic act while Pfizer, the other hero of the pandemic era, searches for its encore. The Covid vaccine probably saved tens of millions of lives around the world, as well as the global economy. For Moderna it also helped create the war chest it needed to produce another wonder drug."}],[{"start":171.5,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1787408783_1759.mp3"}