Moderna again reported declining vaccine sales and tempered its 2025 revenue outlook, but expressed confidence in its plan to break even financially in a few years.
In third-quarter earnings on Thursday, Moderna reported $1 billion in revenue, down roughly 45% from the same three-month period a year ago. The company also lowered the top end of its projected revenue forecast for 2025. It now expects between $1.6 and $2 billion, down from an expected range of $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion.
Still, Moderna shares, which have lost more than half of their value over the last year, ticked up as much as 5% in early trading Thursday. One reason why is progress the company has made in cutting costs, with Moderna claiming that, so far, it’s ahead of its projected target for the year.
“We give credit where it’s due, and [Moderna] is clearly making progress on cost control,” Leerink analyst Mani Foroohar wrote in a note to clients Thursday.
Moderna rose to stardom during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing to market one of the first vaccines for COVID and quickly earning billions of dollars as a result. But the company has struggled mightily to follow that success with another big seller. COVID vaccine sales have fallen considerably from their pandemic heights, leading Moderna to revise its financial forecasts multiple times.
Meanwhile, a combination flu and COVID vaccine hasn’t yet gotten to market, a cytomegalovirus vaccine failed in clinical testing, and another approved shot for respiratory syncytial virus, mResvia, has generated minimal sales in a competitive market. Moderna reported only $2 million in mResvia sales in the third quarter.
Leadership changes at the Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration have hurt the biotech as well. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cut funding for messenger RNA technology and recast a key vaccine committee that softened recommendations for COVID shots, while new FDA leaders have outlined stricter approval frameworks and issued narrower approvals.
Those combined factors have heightened pressure on Moderna not only to cut costs, but come through with newer pipeline projects. The company has made progress on the former front over the last year, dialing back its research strategy in September 2024 and, more recently in July, announcing plans to lay off 10% of its workforce.
On Thursday, Moderna indicated its exceeding its cost-cutting targets — a crucial part of its plan to get to a break-even point by 2028. Operational expenses between July and September were about 34% lower than they were over the same three-month period last year, leaving Moderna on target to reduce those costs by more than $1 billion in 2025.
The company is expecting further R&D cuts “over the coming year or two,” Moderna president Stephen Hoge said during an earnings call.
Beyond cost cuts, Moderna aims to grow revenue through broader use, internationally, of its COVID shots. Approvals could come in Australia, Europe, Japan and Taiwan this year. Its combination flu and COVID vaccine is currently under review in Europe and, in the U.S., Moderna is awaiting guidance about a future resubmission.
Moderna also has a few cancer vaccines in its pipeline, most notably a melanoma shot that’s partnered with Merck & Co. and in late-stage development.
For investors, a “lack of near-term catalysts” and recent failure of its cytomegalovirus shot will keep the focus on “vaccine uptake, headlines from the current administration” and further cost cuts, Foroohar wrote.
