Status: 04.11.2021 13:58
The US biotech group Moderna will produce fewer corona vaccination doses this year than originally expected. The balance sheet will be correspondingly lower. Investors are disappointed.
The US biotech company again showed in the third quarter how much money can be made with the production of the Covid vaccine. On sales of $ 5 billion, the company posted net income of $ 3.3 billion, compared with a loss of $ 233 million for the same period in 2020.
However, Moderna will not be able to meet its forecast for the year as a whole. Instead of a billion, between 700 and 800 million corona vaccine doses are now to be delivered. The company attributes this to longer lead times for international deliveries, some of which are to be postponed to 2022.
There were also delays in the planned expansion of filling capacities for the vaccine. Moderna had already announced in August that there might be capacity restrictions in the current year and therefore no more orders can be accepted. In the UK and Canada there has been an “uneven production ramp-up,” the company said. There were also delays in exports abroad.
Up to five billion dollars less in sales
In addition, Moderna wants to deliver up to 110 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the African Union at “lowest prices”. The first 15 million cans are expected to be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2021, 35 million cans in the first quarter of 2022 and up to 60 million cans in the second quarter of 2022.
Because of all of these pressures, the company’s revenue this year will be up to five billion dollars less than expected. Instead of 20 billion, the company now expects revenues between 15 and 18 billion dollars. The revised forecast caused disappointment on the stock market. The Moderna share lost up to 15 percent in early trading.
In the coming year, sales are expected to be between $ 17 billion and $ 22 billion as the company is shipping its vaccines and booster doses to even more countries than before. This means that Moderna is still lagging behind its larger rival Pfizer, which plans to produce significantly more doses of the joint Covid-19 vaccine with BioNTech in 2021. Pfizer recently raised its sales forecast for the vaccine to $ 36 billion this year – from $ 33.5 billion previously – and expects another $ 29 billion in sales in 2022. Pfizer’s sales forecast assumes delivery of 2.3 billion vaccine doses. In total, Pfizer and BioNTech plan to produce three billion vaccine doses this year.