moderna (mRNA -0.73%) Stocks soared during the early stages of the pandemic as biotech companies were among the first to bring vaccines to market. The vaccine has generated billions of dollars in revenue for Moderna, allowing the company to invest in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate drug development and advance its pipeline.
However, the stock hasn't been the best performer recently, falling about 80% from its 2021 peak. Many investors are turning away from their investments, seeing post-pandemic vaccine sales as much lower than early pandemic sales. stock.
What happens to those who have already bought the stock? Those who chose Moderna as a short-term investment could have won big or lost big, depending on when they sold their shares.
But anyone who believed in Moderna early on and held onto it because of the company's exciting prospects likely won't regret their investment. Find out how much money he would have today if he had invested $10,000 in Moderna in 2019.
Image source: Getty Images.
Moderna's early days
At the end of 2019, the coronavirus had just emerged and Moderna had not yet entered the race to develop a vaccine. However, the company is not new to his mRNA technology and has been developing various mRNA candidates over the years. Still, Moderna has yet to capture investor interest. In its first year of trading, the stock price rose less than 2%, with shares trading around $15 to $20.
If you were one of the early believers in this innovative company and bought $10,000 worth of stock in December 2019, your investment would have skyrocketed over the next two years, rising as much as 2,000%. Then, as it became clear that vaccine revenues would fall significantly from early-pandemic levels, the stock began to fall.
But investors who held on continue to win, as the stock is up 388% since December 2019. Your $10,000 investment would have more than quadrupled in value to $48,800 today.
You may regret not selling the stock at a higher price, even if it's a great return. Don't blame yourself for that. Timing the market to buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest price is nearly impossible.
That's why it's paramount to focus on a company's long-term story when investing. If you have reason to believe that a particular company will deliver growth in the future, you have a solid reason to hang on to your position.
Good news for Moderna investors (or potential investors). Moderna's growth is far from over. This means the stock may have what it takes to skyrocket again in the future, and it could be profitable to maintain your current position or buy and hold now.
Technology that works
Why am I so confident? Moderna's vaccine not only brought in significant revenue, but also proved the important point that the company's mRNA technology works. Although this biotechnology may not be successful in all programs, this platform is of high quality with the potential to yield other vaccines and treatments.
Now, Moderna is increasingly becoming a multi-product company. Regulators are currently reviewing the company's respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine candidate, which could be its next commercial product as early as this year. Moderna's RSV candidate faces competition, but it has the advantage of being the only candidate offered in prefilled syringes. This makes it faster and easier to manage, a feature that can help you quickly gain market share.
Moderna's late-stage pipeline includes respiratory vaccines, latent viral vaccines, oncology and rare disease treatments, and could generate sales of more than $10 billion. And Moderna predicts that by 2025, two products will be on the market and three products will be launched, and sales growth will return.
All of this means that while the company's earnings and stock price may be depressed right now, they probably won't stay that way for much longer. Moderna has many pieces to build a new and durable growth story, which could help boost returns and investment in this innovative biotechnology over the long term.
