JPM23: Moderna reaped $18.4B in COVID vaccine sales last year, projects at least $5B in 2023

Throughout 2022, headlines regularly documented the decline in COVID-19 vaccine demand, prompting market watchers to wonder how the leading manufacturers would fare on the sales front. On Monday, Moderna provided new clues about the state of the COVID shot market.

The mRNA juggernaut reported that Spikevax generated approximately $18.4 billion in revenue last year. The number was short of the company’s original estimate of $22 billion at the start of the year but did exceed its 2021 sales of $17.7 billion.

In its third-quarter earnings report, Moderna had slashed its sales estimate for Spikevax to a range of between $18 billion and $19 billion. The adjustment accounted for delayed shipments of vaccines to Europe in response to declining demand. The company said it had deferred between $2 billion and $3 billion in vaccine sales to 2023.

On Monday, Moderna also projected 2023 sales of the vaccine to reach at least $5 billion. That figure does not account for contracts that could be signed this year. The company specified the potential for deals with the U.S., Europe and Japan, among others.

The company will increase its R&D investment to $4.5 billion in 2022, it said. Moderna has 48 programs in development, with 36 clinical trials ongoing.

Moderna provided the updates ahead of CEO Stéphane Bancel’s state-of-the-company address this afternoon (2:15 PT, 5:15 ET) at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

As for COVID vaccine sales, while Moderna adjusted its projection downward after the third quarter, Pfizer bumped up its COVID vaccine sales estimate to between $32 billion and $34 billion for the year after surpassing sales expectations in the period.

In June of last year, Moderna agreed to postpone delivery of the shots due by the end of the second quarter to later in the year and to 2023. The month before, Europe reached a similar deal with Pfizer and BioNTech to delay delivery of their COVID vaccines.  

The company also experienced production issues in September. At a Catalent plant in Indiana, millions of doses of Moderna’s new booster vaccines were withheld as the contract manufacturer addressed issues that were raised during an FDA inspection.