Moderna shares tumble as it cuts full-guidance

Shares in Moderna tumbled in pre-market trading on Thursday, after the drugs group cut its forecast for delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine.

The US drugs group said longer delivery times for exports, plus the temporary impact of expanding its fill-finish capacity, could shift deliveries out of the 2021 full year into 2022.

As a result, it now expects to deliver between 700m and 800m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, which would realise product sales of between $15bn and $18bn, down on an earlier forecast for $20bn. Moderna had previously said it expected to make between 800m and 1bn doses in 2021.

The revision saw the stock tumble 14% in pre-market trading, and it continued to fall once the market opened. By 1345 GMT, Modern was trading 17% lower.

Moderna has been expanding its bottling capacity, known as fill-finish, as it looks to boost production and meet high demand for its Covid-19 vaccine, the only product the firm currently has on the market.

The success of the vaccine helped Moderna post third-quarter revenues of $5.0bn in the three months to 30 September, against $157m a year previously. Product sales were $4.8bn, after it sold 208 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Analysts had been expecting product sales of closer to $5.86bn, according to Reuters.

Net income was $3.3bn in the third quarter, against a net loss of $233m a year previously.

However, longer term, and Moderna said sales could be in the range of $17bn to $22bn in 2022, as it signs deals with more countries for both vaccines and booster shots.

Moderna’s two-shot vaccine was given emergency use authorisation in the US in December before being approved by UK regulators in January.