Moderna (MRNA -0.75%) recently landed yet another supply agreement for its blockbuster COVID-19 vaccine. In this Motley Fool Live video recorded on July 14, 2021, Motley Fool contributors Keith Speights and Brian Orelli discuss this deal and what it means for the company.
10 stocks we like better than Moderna Inc.
When our award-winning analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Moderna Inc. wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
*Stock Advisor returns as of June 7, 2021
Keith Speights: There's not an awful lot of COVID news right now coming from the drugmakers, and we've talked about some earlier this week. But on Monday, Moderna announced a supply deal with Argentina for 20 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine. Brian, what should investors know about Moderna's latest supply deal?
Brian Orelli: We didn't get any pricing information about the deal. Actually, there wasn't much information altogether. The entire press release was only three sentences long, and that was only because they broke the quote from the CEO into two sentences, so it was a really short press release.
Basically, all we know is it is 20 million doses of the current vaccine or the updated variant booster if that gets approved in Argentina. They'll start delivery in the first quarter of 2022.
I think the fact that the delivery is going to start six months from now really shows how supply-constrained Moderna is. I think it'll be interesting to see how management presents the to-be-delivered doses on the next conference call. Will they break it out into ones that are supposed to be delivered in 2021 and those that won't get delivered until 2022, or are they just going to lump them all together?
Then obviously they will probably give a total value for that amount, too. But so it will be interesting to just see how big that's grown over the last quarter and then try to make some guesses as to how much is going to be in 2021 versus 2022 if they don't break that out.
Speights: Obviously, we don't know the pricing details here but if you said $25 a dose, maybe, 20 million doses is a substantial deal for Moderna here. It's not an insignificant amount of money coming in here.
Orelli: I think they could be discounted more than that. I think the countries that are buying the doses now are probably not able to pay as much as the U.S. and European countries and so I think that you can probably safely guess that the deals that are being done now are for a lot lower price per dose than what the U.S. and the EU are paying.
Speights: I wasn't familiar with the population size of Argentina. I looked it up when this news came out earlier this week, and I think it's around 40 million or so, so 20 million doses is basically enough to fully vaccinate about a fourth of the country. I guess it's possible Argentina will be making other deals as well.
