Moderna: R&D Day Reveals Potentially Superior Flu Vaccine as Well as Oncology, Rare-Disease Promise

In conjunction with its research and development day, Moderna announced positive data for its flu vaccine and rare-disease treatments, additional insights into its oncology strategy, and aggressive goals for moving 15 new products to market and 50 new candidates to clinical trials over the next five years. We’re maintaining our $266 fair value estimate. While investors reacted positively to the announcements, we still see the shares as significantly undervalued, with too much focus on the near-term COVID-19 vaccine sales decline and not enough focus on the multiple avenues of longer-term growth. We’ve removed smaller, earlier-stage programs that have been discontinued but added in new programs in phenylketonuria (rare disease) and norovirus (latent vaccine). We’ve also slightly boosted our long-term assumptions for R&D spending to fit guidance.