Moderna stock drops amid President Biden’s signaling an end to COVID pandemic
Moderna and other COVID vaccine stocks drop after President Biden hints at a potential end to the pandemic.
Video transcript
DAVE BRIGGS: My play is Moderna, a Trending Ticker on YahooFinance.com. The symbol MRNA, of course. The stock plunging on four little words from POTUS, "the pandemic is over." That's what President Biden told Scott Pioli on "60 Minutes." And shares of BioNTech, Novavax fell right along with Moderna and fell rather steeply.
Most recent COVID data shows the seven-day average of new cases declining to about 60,000. Still pretty high though, isn't it? And daily deaths down. But again, still significant, 500 per day. However, POTUS says it's over.
Moderna expects further demand for its vaccines in China. They also expect to generate about $21 billion in revenue this year. But that's when the cliff comes. Analysts expect a dropoff in revenue around half next year. Shares of Moderna down 70%-plus from its record high and falling today, as you can see, north of 5%.
It's going to be a rough go, Rachelle, as their competitors figure out what the post-pandemic shift is. Spent all of that R&D and all that time receiving government money. It's time for a new plan.
RACHELLE AKUFFO: And we're seeing, obviously, Pfizer and Novavax also sliding on that news. But we have to keep in mind that obviously COVID, this is a longer situation. We know that the CDC has said potentially we could end up with perhaps annual shots as well.
Obviously, there was quite a bit of discussion online about whether or not, since the president wasn't the one who called it a pandemic, whether he should be the one to sort of take that off the table, given that there are still deaths and hospitalizations. So a bit of controversy there. But obviously, COVID not gone yet. He did say there's still a risk. But saying the pandemic is over, that's a strong move that not everybody is on board with.
SEANA SMITH: Yeah. And as you take a look at the stocks, it becomes more of a global play just from a revenue perspective in terms of getting the shots out there and making the vaccine available for other countries compared to maybe the slower growth, obviously, that we would see here in the US. But again, shares up 7%. I wouldn't be surprised, maybe, if this drop continues down for a couple of days.