While Monday was a pretty good day for the markets, we saw a few sectors plunge over the course of the trading day. The worst-performing of which were vaccine stocks, specifically those involved in making Covid-19 related treatments. This included Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX), but other Covid-19 vaccine makers were down on Monday after investors reacted to twitter comments from Senator Bernie Sanders.
Though not the first to do so, Sanders took issue with how vaccine companies, especially Moderna, have made tens of billions of dollars in revenue and stock market gains amidst a global pandemic. In his most recent tweets, he said that this was a blatant example of corporate greed and that these same companies should share their vaccines with the rest of the world on their dime.
“Last week, eight investors in Pfizer and Moderna became $10 billion richer as news about the Omicron variant spread. It’s time for these pharmaceutical companies to share their vaccines with the world and start controlling their greed,” tweeted Sanders on Monday morning.
While Sanders has tweeted about other companies in the past, this particular message seems to have hit a nerve with investors and regular Americans. While many big pharma companies promised not to make any profits from their vaccine efforts, Moderna and others have seen their market valuations skyrocket over the past year or two. Shareholders are now expecting that new boosters will continue to be a thing going forward into the future.
Amidst all this, some Americans have felt that companies shouldn’t be profiting in this way, or at least, that it’s untasteful to do so. While Moderna has plenty of drug candidates, the only reason it has recently become such a big company is its Covid-19 vaccine.
However, Sanders’ tweets weren’t the only catalyst for vaccine stocks today. New data shows that the Omicron variant that had investors on edge last week might not be as serious as first anticipated. While that certainly helped the stock market, the news also had the opposite effect on vaccine makers, as a less serious variant means that there’s less demand for new booster shots or existing vaccines.
Shares of most vaccine stocks were down today. Moderna was down almost 13.5% on the news, while BioNTech was down 18.5%. Other companies, including Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) were also down today following the announcement. Moderna was originally up as much as 35% after news of Omicron broke out. However, the stock has since given back most of those gains. Regardless, most analysts remain at least somewhat bullish on the stock for 2022.
Moderna Company Profile
Moderna is a commercial-stage biotech that was founded in 2010 and had its initial public offering in December 2018. The firm’s mRNA technology was rapidly validated with its COVID-19 vaccine, which was authorized in the United States in December 2020. Moderna had 24 mRNA development programs as of early 2021, with 13 of these in clinical trials. Programs span a wide range of therapeutic areas, including infectious disease, oncology, cardiovascular disease, and rare genetic diseases. – Warrior Trading News
