Covid-19 sales dominate Moderna’s $6bn revenue amid profiteering concerns
Covid-19 vaccine sales have dominated Moderna’s more than $6bn (£5.7bn) revenue, as calls against pandemic profiteering escalate.
Revenue hit $6.1bn (£7.6bn) for the first quarter of 2022, compared with $1.9bn (£1.5bn) for the same period in 2021 – carried heavily by the pharmaceutical firm’s coronavirus vaccine, which was responsible for an eyewatering $5.9bn (£4.7bn) in sales income.
The Covid-19 cliff edge that investors had feared at the beginning of the year have failed to materialise for Moderna, as well as competitor Pfizer, another famed Covid-19 vaccine maker which is under fire for profiting heavily from the global health crisis.
“Moderna has benefited from billions in public funding and years of painstaking research by US government scientists – yet it still demands governments around the world pay through the nose to access this vaccine,” campaigner at Global Justice Now, Tim Bierley said. “This is a model that big pharma companies have been allowed to get away with for too long.”
Protestors from Global Justice, have formed a campaign consortium alongside Act-Up London, Just Treatment and Stop Aids, to protest against so-called pandemic profiteering in recent weeks.
Moderna’s jab raked in $1.7bn (£1.3bn) in the first quarter of 2021, which has since been dwarfed by its latest bout of revenue, despite cases beginning to recede.
The US biotech firm, headquartered in Cambridge, pulled $8.58 (£6.85) on average in earnings per share, compared with just $2.84 (£2.26) in the first few months of last year, in yet another signal of strength from the firm.
Moderna, which has been one of the pandemic’s biggest winners, has more than doubled its employee workforce to 3,200 over the past year. And has injected $554m (£442.7m) into research and development in the last three months.
While the pharmaceutical firm is yet to feel the impacts of Covid-19 natural decline and investor interest, the company may continue to be subject to “high volatility,” Swiss investment firm BB Biotech cautioned in late April, as cases rise and fall across the globe.
The company’s share price has sunk 2.31 per cent $143.15 per share.
In a statement, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said: “We also look forward to advancing our therapeutic programs and sharing proof-of-concept readouts on our rare genetic disease programs for propionic acidemia and methylmalonic acidemia, and on our personalized cancer vaccine program this year.”