A quarterly bottom line that was deep in the red sent Moderna (MRNA 1.69%) shareholders booking for the exits on Thursday. Following the release of its third-quarter figures, the high-profile biotech's stock lost nearly 7% of its value on the day. By contrast, the S&P 500 index was in positive territory, closing the day 1.9% higher.
Moderna booked a monster bottom-line loss in its third quarter
That morning, Moderna published its latest earnings release. This showed that the company's revenue was slightly over $1.8 billion, which compares unfavorably to the third-quarter 2022 tally of almost $3.4 billion. On the bright side, that take was well higher than the $1.4 billion average analyst estimate.
The situation was far more dramatic on the bottom line. The biotech flipped violently to a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) loss of more than $3.6 billion ($9.53 per share) from the year-ago profit of more than $1.0 billion. This almost certainly caught those analysts by surprise, as collectively, they were expecting a shortfall of only $1.90 per share.
Moderna is a company in transition, as sales of its only commercialized product -- the COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax -- are declining sharply now that we seem to be past the height of the pandemic. Moderna has been adjusting to this, but the shift isn't an easy one; the company's costs for this were a major reason behind the deep net loss.
The company guided for at least $6 billion in revenue for 2023
Moderna's guidance for the entirety of 2023 calls for product sales of $6 billion at the minimum. Its cost of sales should come in at around $5 billion, which includes what the biotech terms as a "proactive resizing of the company's manufacturing footprint" that is anticipated to total $1.6 billion across the third and fourth quarters alone.
The company did not provide a bottom-line forecast.
