Moderna's R&D Day Unveils Strategic Roadmap Beyond COVID Franchise: Goldman Sachs

On Wednesday, Moderna Inc MRNA conducted an R&D Day event outlining its strategic initiatives across four key areas - Respiratory Vaccines, Latent/Other Vaccines, Oncology Therapeutics, and Rare Disease Therapeutics.

Regarding the pipeline, mRNA's Phase 3 seasonal influenza vaccine successfully met the non-inferiority threshold required for approval. This achievement involved higher HAI geometric mean titers and seroconversion rates for all A and B strains compared to GSK Plc's GSK Fluarix, notes Goldman Sachs.

This progress removes obstacles and opens the path for a combination vaccine. 

mRNA has set ambitious goals, aiming for up to 15 product launches across the four verticals mentioned over the next five years. 

In the oncology, rare disease, and latent disease sectors, they are targeting annual sales of $10 billion-$15 billion by 2028. Additionally, they are eyeing revenues of $8 billion-$15 billion from the respiratory franchise by 2027.

Goldman Sachs says the updates reflect mRNA's anticipation of transitioning beyond a COVID-centric business. They've already started shipping booster doses, and their FY23 sales guidance remains at $6 billion to $8 billion. 

This signals their expectation of emerging revenue drivers, including the launch of RSV, a combination of flu and COVID vaccines, and next-generation COVID solutions by 2025.

William Blair sees the Phase 3 success of mRNA-1010 as a positive step toward potential commercialization as well as an achievement for mRNA vaccines broadly given previous immunogenicity challenges against flu B in Moderna's earlier studies and Sanofi SA's SNY mRNA influenza candidate. 

The analysts look forward to individualized neoantigen therapy (INT) data from the Phase 2 study in melanoma in Q4 2023.

Price Action: MRNA shares are up 4.89% at $113.90 on the last check Thursday.