Moderna blows out first-quarter earnings expectations, triples Covid vaccine sales

Moderna sold $5.9 billion of its Covid vaccine in the first quarter, blowing out revenue and profit expectations.

The biotech company’s shares soared by more than 8% in premarket trading on Wednesday.

Moderna maintained its full-year guidance of $21 billion in Covid vaccine sales. The sales guidance is based on signed agreements with governments and does not include any orders from the U.S., so the final number could ultimately come in higher.

Moderna’s first-quarter vaccine sales more than tripled over the same period last year, when it reported $1.7 billion in sales shortly after the shots first rolled out. The Covid vaccine, Spikevax, is the company’s only commercially available product.

Moderna reported $3.66 billion in net income for the quarter, a threefold increase over the $1.2 billion it reported in the same period last year.

Here’s how the company performed compared with what Wall Street expected, based on analysts’ average estimates compiled by Refinitiv:

• Adjusted EPS: $8.58 per share, vs. $5.21 expected
• Revenue: $6.07 billion, vs. $4.62 billion expected

CEO Stephane Bancel said he expects Moderna to book even stronger vaccine sales in the second half of the year as governments order more shots to get ready for fall vaccination campaigns. Bancel said Moderna expects to receive regulatory approval in late summer for a redesigned vaccine that targets the mutations on the omicron variant in addition to the original strain that emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019.

“The virus is mutating to become more and more infectious, and there’s waning immunity,” Bancel told CNBC in an interview on Squawk Box. “It is going to be really important to boost people in the fall with a better adapted vaccine which is what we’re working towards.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.