MRNA Stock Price and Forecast: When is it time to buy Moderna?

Moderna shares fall again on Tuesday.
MRNA faces multiple headwinds as shares suffer.
Results, antiviral pills, dispute with US government are just some of the headwinds.

Ivan Brian FXStreet

Moderna (MRNA) shares fell again on Tuesday, but at least the move was small by recent standards. Moderna stock closed lower by just 0.34% at $234.28. The stock has been under pressure following its earnings release earlier this month and then more news from competitors Pfizer (PFE) and Merck (MRK). Moderna probably stretched too far on the back of its covid vaccine success and now it is snapping back.

Moderna (MRNA) stock news

Moderna has been wildly successful as the development of its Spikevax covid vaccine has transformed the company. In September 2020, so just about a year ago, the company had revenue of $158 million. The last results to the end of September 2021 show revenue of just under $5 billion. The reason is solely down to covid vaccine development. Moderna and Pfizer are the two main suppliers.

Source: Refinitiv

However, as mentioned Moderna is currently a one-trick pony. It does have numerous other development candidates, but none will be as profitable as a covid vaccine. This pandemic is a once-in-a-century event and of a global nature. Even other successful drugs will never have this potential market again.

Estimates for 2023 show revenue peaking at $7 billion in Q1 2022 before falling by 50% to $3.6 billion by Q2 2023. The next boost to revenue could come from a flu vaccine as this is another worldwide vaccine with billions of doses given each year. However, there is stiff competition from other pharma companies. At present Moderna's flu vaccine using MRNA technology is in phase-3 trials. Below is a list of all development pipelines from Moderna. As you can see only a few are in phase-3 trials.

Source: Moderna

With increased competition from Pfizer (PFE) and Merck's (MRK) antiviral pill for covid and the gradual winding down of covid, Moderna needs more pipeline development and fast to replace those huge profits from covid vaccines. Drug development is notoriously slow, hit and miss, and leads to volatile share performance.

Moderna is also facing headwinds from haggling over intellectual property with the US government. This creates uncertainty, and markets hate uncertainty.

Moderna (MRNA) stock forecast

We have outlined the challenging fundamental outlook for Moderna and now turn our attention to the technical aspect. What we see is a consolidation or pausing phase after the recent heavy losses. This is usually a continuation pattern. The market is now more and more accepting of these new lower prices the longer it remains down here. Big resistance from the 200-day moving average at $255 and the yearly Volume-Weighted Average Price at $265. Only above there does the bearish outlook change. Right now the target in the short term is $188.41 and then $157.70. At this $157 area there is strong volume support, so our argument would then need to be reevaluated.

MRNA 1-day chart

Author

Ivan Brian

FXStreet

Ivan Brian started his career with AIB Bank in corporate finance and then worked for seven years at Baxter. He started as a macro analyst before becoming Head of Research and then CFO.

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