Moderna stock plunges 20% after company lowers 2025 sales forecast by $1 billion

Moderna on Monday lowered its 2025 sales guidance by roughly $1 billion due to a few potential headwinds later this year, as the biotech company continues to cut costs and expand its portfolio.

Moderna now expects 2025 revenue to come in between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, most of which will come in the second half of the year. The majority of those sales will come from Moderna’s Covid shot and newly launched vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, according to a release.

The guidance is down from a prior forecast range of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion issued in September. At the time, the company said it expects to break even on an operating cash basis in 2028 — pushed back from 2026 — with $6 billion in revenue.

Shares of Moderna opened 20% lower Monday. Other vaccine stocks also fell, with Novavax down 6% in early trading and BioNTech down 4%.

“As we head into 2025, there are a handful of uncertainties that we are planning for,” Moderna CFO Jamey Mock told CNBC. “As of this time period, we are planning for them to be headwinds. They could be tailwinds, but right now we’re seeing them as headwinds.” 

Mock pointed to four factors that could weigh on sales, including increased competition in the Covid market. He said Moderna’s share of the U.S. retail market for Covid shots fell to 40% at the end of 2024 from 48% in 2023, and the company is preparing for another decline this year. 

He noted Sanofi will co-commercialize Novavax‘s Covid vaccine worldwide under a new agreement, which could potentially make that shot more competitive. 

Mock said the second factor is falling vaccination rates, which were down around 7% overall in the U.S. retail market in fall 2024 compared to the same time in 2023. The last two factors are timing around manufacturing contracts with a handful of countries, and uncertainty around what advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will recommend for RSV revaccination. 

But Mock noted that the company expects to reduce 2025 cash cost expenses by $1 billion, with plans for additional 2026 cost reductions of $500 million. 

“We are taking the right amount of cost to preserve our cash,” Mock said. “We’re excited to invest and diversify our portfolio.” 

The announcement comes as Moderna charts a path forward after the rapid decline in demand for its Covid vaccine, its only commercially available product until its RSV shot entered the market last year. It also comes ahead of Moderna’s presentation at the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, one of the largest gatherings of health-care executives in the world and a hotbed for deals activity for the industry. 

Revenue from Moderna’s two shots met its forecast for 2024, coming in at around $3 billion to $3.1 billion. In November, the company said its updated Covid shot benefitted from gaining approval in the U.S. three weeks earlier than the previous iteration of the shot did in 2023. 

Still, those sales represent a steep drop off from the $6.7 billion that Moderna’s Covid shot booked in 2023 and the $18 billion it generated in 2022, as fewer people rolled up their sleeves for updated jabs. 

Moderna plans to beef up its portfolio with 10 new product approvals over the next three years, including a combination shot targeting Covid and the flu and a “next-generation” Covid shot. The company on Monday said it could see three approvals in 2025 alone. 

The company is betting on a pipeline built around its messenger RNA platform, which is the technology used in its Covid vaccine and RSV shot.