The Short Trap of the Decade: Why Wall Street Still Doesn’t Understand Moderna’s Second Act

Every few years, the financial commentariat suffers from a collective failure of imagination. When a beaten-down stock catches fire, the reflexive reaction from spreadsheet purists is depressingly predictable: dismiss the rally, call the valuation absurd, and hunt for an entry to short.

Right now, that exact mistake is happening in real time with Moderna (MRNA).

Following the Phase 3 topline readout for its personalized cancer vaccine program (reported August 19, 2026; full data presentation at ESMO on October 24), the bears have retreated to a comfortable, lazy narrative:

“It’s just melanoma. It’s an easy target. Other companies have done this before. The valuation has completely detached from reality.”

Every single part of that thesis is demonstrably false.

Trying to undersell Moderna’s Phase 3 data reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of oncology history. Conflating Moderna with speculative, cash-burning micro-cap biotechs is an egregious category error. And attempting to short a paradigm-shifting biotech platform using a static, single-year Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model is a classic lesson in how accounts blow up.

Here is what the market is actually looking at—and why this run has far more structural power than the skeptics realize.

1. The Historical Myth: “Other Biotechs Have Done This Before”

Let’s dismantle the biggest myth circulating on financial podcasts and social media: the idea that therapeutic cancer vaccines routinely clear Phase 3 trials in melanoma, or that melanoma represents a “low bar.”

In the entire history of cancer immunology, no personalized neoantigen vaccine had ever cleared a randomized Phase 3 trial until Moderna and Merck’s INTerpath-001. Full stop.

For over thirty years, Big Pharma poured tens of billions of dollars into therapeutic cancer vaccines, specifically targeting melanoma because of its high tumor mutational burden (TMB). The result was not a track record of easy wins—it was an absolute graveyard:

Canvaxin (CancerVax): A whole-cell vaccine halted mid-Phase 3 in the mid-2000s when vaccinated patients showed zero survival benefit over placebo.
MAGE-A3 (GlaxoSmithKline): The massive DERMA trial enrolled over 1,300 melanoma patients targeting shared antigens. It collapsed completely in 2014, failing to improve disease-free survival.
Allovectin-7 (Vical): A plasmid-based immunotherapy was obliterated in Phase 3 in 2013 against basic dacarbazine chemotherapy.
gp100 Peptide Vaccines: Routinely failed monotherapy Phase 3 trials for decades, eventually relegated to being the baseline control arm that Bristol Myers Squibb outperformed to approve Yervoy.

Whenever bears claim “cancer vaccines have worked before,” they invariably point to two historical outliers that share zero mechanistic overlap with Moderna’s platform:

Sipuleucel-T (Provenge / Dendreon): An autologous cell therapy approved in 2010 for prostate cancer—not melanoma. It targeted a single, non-mutated self-antigen, offered a meager four-month survival extension, was an operational nightmare to manufacture, and entirely failed to translate into a modular platform.
T-Vec / Imlygic (Amgen): An oncolytic herpes virus approved in 2015 for direct, local lesion injection. It is an in-situ lytic agent, not a systemic personalized vaccine, and it repeatedly failed when tested in systemic combination trials with Keytruda across visceral, metastatic disease.

Moderna’s intismeran autogene (mRNA-4157 / V940) achieved what thirty years of oncology research failed to do: prove that an automated digital algorithm can sequence a patient’s unique biopsy, synthesize up to 34 distinct patient-specific neoantigens, deliver them via mRNA, and train a cytotoxic T-cell response that decisively beats the global standard of care in a randomized Phase 3 adjuvant setting.

Traditional oncology fails because when you hit a tumor with a single targeted agent, you may eliminate 95% of the cancerous cells, but the remaining 5% harboring a secondary bypass mutation survive, multiply, and kill the host.

Individualized neoantigen therapy is an algorithmic engine firing 34 distinct polyclonal targets simultaneously. It directly neutralizes cancer’s primary evolutionary weapon—clonal heterogeneity—by deploying patient-specific polyclonal immunity.

Calling this a “low-bar” victory is historical revisionism. It unlocked a biological door the entire pharmaceutical industry spent three decades trying to batter down.

2. The Micro-Cap Delusion: Stop Comparing Moderna to Lab Vendors

A peculiar strain of “circle of competence” distortion happens when micro-cap traders look at large-cap platform companies. Analysts accustomed to screening cash-strapped diagnostics names look at Moderna’s chart and think: “This looks just like a hot penny bio that got ahead of its skis.”

Moderna is not ImmunityBio. It is not GeneDx, Personalis, or Tempus AI.

Those companies operate primarily as diagnostics labs, toolmakers, or single-asset speculative plays. They rely on sample reimbursement, fight commercial insurers over CPT billing codes, and trade at the whim of retail sentiment and thematic micro-cap ETFs.

Most importantly, small biotechs suffer from a fatal structural flaw: the inevitable, momentum-killing dilution. When a sub-billion-dollar clinical biotech spikes 200%, the CFO files an S-3 shelf offering within 72 hours. They have to. They are burning cash with a ticking clock, and survival mandates dumping secondary shares on euphoric retail buyers.

Moderna does not operate under that liquidity trap:

The Balance Sheet Fortress: Moderna entered this inflection point backed by a multi-billion-dollar cash cushion built during the pandemic windfall, reinforced by established commercial revenue from its respiratory franchise. There is zero near-term dilution overhang forcing management’s hand.
The Merck Partnership & “Boom”: Bears love to scoff that “Moderna only gets 50% of the economics.” That is spreadsheet myopia at its finest. That 50/50 split is with Merck & Co.—the undisputed ruler of the global immuno-oncology market. Merck absorbs half of the staggering Phase 3 clinical trial costs, handles worldwide regulatory filings, and plugs the therapy directly into its global Keytruda commercial infrastructure. Moderna does not need to build a multi-billion-dollar global oncology sales force from scratch.

When the Phase 3 data was unblinded, Dr. Dean Li, President of Merck Research Laboratories, didn’t offer polite corporate PR. He captured the exact magnitude of the shift:

“It isn’t hallelujah. It’s boom.”

That was not the sigh of relief of a gambler hoping for a borderline p-value. It was the calculated assessment of Big Pharma’s sharpest R&D chief recognizing that a thirty-year scientific wall had just been pulverized.

Moderna is an institutional mega-cap asset. It does not belong in a conversation with diagnostic testing labs; it belongs in the conversation with Regeneron, Vertex, and Gilead—large-scale modular platforms capable of self-funding multi-indication expansion.

3. Steelmanning the Bear Case (And Why It Still Fails)

Intellectual honesty demands steelmanning the opposing thesis. The serious bear case was never “melanoma is easy.” The real bear case looks like this:

The Addressable Market in Melanoma is Modest: Resected high-risk melanoma represents tens of thousands of patients annually, not hundreds of thousands. Even with premium orphan pricing, melanoma alone cannot justify an explosive valuation re-rating.
Individualized Manufacturing is Operationally Brutal: Every batch is bespoke (N=1). Biopsy the tumor, sequence the DNA/RNA, predict the optimal epitopes, manufacture a unique mRNA cassette, sterile-filter, and infuse—all within a strict window because adjuvant patients cannot wait months. Turnaround times and high Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) are the traditional graveyard of personalized medicine.
Payer Pushback on High-Cost Regimens: A personalized therapy priced like cell therapy in an adjuvant setting will face grueling prior-authorization warfare and resistance from single-payer healthcare systems abroad.
Keytruda’s Looming Loss of Exclusivity (LOE): Keytruda faces patent expiration around 2028. Because the INTerpath program is anchored on Keytruda combination regimens, biosimilar entry will alter pricing, contracting, and Merck’s strategic incentives.
The Lung Cancer Horizon is Far Away: INTerpath-002 in adjuvant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) carries estimated primary-completion timelines stretching toward 2030. That is a lengthy window to underwrite platform value on faith.

Here is why that steelman still crumbles:

On Market Size: Melanoma was never the endgame; it was the biological beachhead. The market is not pricing a single adjuvant indication; it is pricing the platform’s validated right to contest lung, bladder, renal cell, and gastrointestinal cancers. Every subsequent indication is a multi-billion-dollar call option that was violently repriced by Phase 3 proof of concept.
On Manufacturing: This is precisely what mRNA was architected to do. Rapid, sequence-to-vial, cell-free synthesis is Moderna’s core competency—demonstrated at planetary scale during COVID. Turnaround times in clinical trials shrank to weeks, not months. Bears are describing an operational barrier that Moderna spent a decade and billions of dollars resolving.
On Keytruda LOE: Merck is not sitting idle. Subcutaneous pembrolizumab reformulations protect the franchise, and Merck’s incentive to defend a combination that extends its anti-PD-1 leadership is paramount. An asset that enhances Keytruda’s efficacy is the most lucrative lifecycle-management tool Merck could possess. Biosimilars complicate contracting math; they do not invalidate clinical superiority.
On Clinical Timelines: 2030 is distant, but financial markets do not wait for final study completion to adjust discount rates. Equities reprice probability of technical success (PoS) the moment biological feasibility is demonstrated. The adjuvant lung opportunity became dramatically more probable the second INTerpath-001 hit its primary endpoints.

4. Valuation Dogmatism: The Biotech Equivalent of Tesla

Attempting to model Moderna at the dawn of platform validation using a static, single-year DCF model is a fool’s errand.

Moderna is trading like the biotech equivalent of Tesla in 2019–2020.

Back then, legacy automotive analysts opened Excel, divided enterprise value by car deliveries, and shorted the stock into every parabolic run because “the multiple made no sense.” What they failed to grasp was the structural regime shift: the market ceased valuing Tesla as a cyclical capital-intensive automaker and began pricing it as an energy and software platform with near-limitless terminal value.

In biotech, when a paradigm shift occurs, historical valuation anchor points detach completely:

Between 2020 and 2021, analysts who claimed Moderna was wildly overvalued at $60, $100, and $150 watched institutional liquidity, index rebalancing, and sheer narrative dominance carry the stock to nearly $500.
Look at Vertex Pharmaceuticals during the clinical validation of its cystic fibrosis franchise, or Gilead Sciences during the 2013–2015 rollout of Sovaldi and Harvoni. When a therapeutic platform cures or decisively halts a fatal disease, traditional valuation multiples expand to generational extremes. Generalist institutional funds are forced to buy the equity regardless of valuation simply to prevent career-ending benchmark tracking error.

5. Striking Lightning Twice in Under a Decade

Bears cling to another cynical narrative: “Spikevax was just a temporary pandemic windfall; the sales fell off a cliff, so it doesn’t count.”

That is revisionist nonsense. In pharmaceuticals, a blockbuster is defined by the scale of its real-world impact and the commercial footprint it leaves behind. The cumulative revenue generated by Spikevax made it one of the most lucrative and rapidly scaled commercial therapeutic rollouts in medical history.

Most mid-tier biotechs spend twenty to thirty years praying a single small molecule can clear a Phase 3 study just to stave off insolvency. To pioneer a brand-new technological modality, engineer automated manufacturing from scratch, book tens of billions in commercial cash flow, and then turn around and unlock a historic breakthrough in solid-tumor oncology inside of fifteen years is virtually unprecedented.

Within 11 years of incorporation, Moderna delivered an operational year booking over $17B in top-line revenue, followed by late-stage clinical efficacy across three completely separate branches of medicine within 15 years.

Meanwhile, the commercial respiratory engine continues to quietly execute:

In April 2026, Moderna’s mCOMBRIAX achieved European authorization as the world’s first approved flu-plus-COVID combination vaccine.
In August 2026, the FDA approved mFLUSIVA—the first mRNA seasonal influenza vaccine cleared in the United States, showing roughly 27% superior relative efficacy over standard-of-care comparator vaccines in Phase 3 trials.

Under normal market conditions, either milestone would dominate Wall Street coverage. Today, they are treated as footnotes. Why? Because the market has caught the scent of something infinitely larger: an individualized immuno-oncology platform backed by Phase 3 data and co-piloted by Merck.

6. The Cognitive Dissonance: When Biology Meets Software

Right now, Wall Street is paralyzed by cognitive dissonance:

Tech analysts understand zero-marginal-cost code, software compilers, and network effects, but they freeze because they don’t understand the FDA, hazard ratios, and clinical trial architecture.
Biotech analysts understand clinical endpoints, but they are utterly incapable of modeling a platform where melanoma, lung, renal, and bladder cancer all run through the exact same automated manufacturing chassis.

Moderna’s individualized neoantigen therapy is not brewed in a massive remote bioreactor. The patient’s own cellular machinery compiles the synthetic digital code into physical antigens to train the immune system.

When a software update does not require redesigning the underlying CPU, software scales exponentially. Moderna does not need to reinvent chemistry for every new solid-tumor indication; they run the exact same sequencing pipeline, feed the data to the same algorithm, synthesize the same mRNA backbone, and let human ribosomes do the rest.

How big could this be? It has the hallmarks of an exponential paradigm shift—just like when Steve Jobs eliminated the fixed physical keyboard and replaced it with a single sheet of glass running software. Industry heavyweights and analysts relentlessly mocked it at the time. Shorting Moderna today looks like a similarly dangerous mistake.

If you are evaluating this company strictly as another Vertex, Regeneron, or Gilead, you are still thinking too small. The potential could break standard pharmaceutical assumptions the same way scaling compute broke historical hardware limits. The narrative momentum carries the same seismic weight as Moderna during the pandemic outbreak, Nvidia after ChatGPT’s debut, or Eli Lilly opening the GLP-1 floodgates.

7. Conviction Over Consensus

When I first looked at Moderna years ago, I was as skeptical as anyone. A cure synthesized inside your own cells seemed speculative—almost like science fiction. Early on, I even opted for the Pfizer vaccine simply due to the safety of legacy brand recognition.

But an interaction during the height of the pandemic stuck with me: speaking to a frontline grocery worker who was beaming with pride because she had just received her Moderna shot. It sounded emotional and anecdotal at the time, but the underlying truth never left my mind: the platform worked, it scaled under impossible conditions, and it saved lives.

I began accumulating shares of Moderna in 2023, continued buying through early 2025, and have never sold a single share.

My investment thesis was grounded in simple, first-principles logic:

The COVID vaccine was the proof of concept. It proved mRNA could be synthesized rapidly, scaled globally, and translated by human cells safely.
Respiratory combination vaccines evolved Moderna from a pandemic one-hit wonder into a durable commercial platform.
Oncology is Moderna’s second act. Entering the August 19 Phase 3 readout carried immense binary risk, but the structural asymmetry on the other side of validation was generational.

The weight of this position has grown dramatically over the past several months, yet the broader story is only getting started. Skeptics will continue to stare at their spreadsheets, recalculate terminal multiples, and attempt to short into parabolic momentum.

Let them. Stepping in front of an institutionally validated, paradigm-shifting platform armed with positive Phase 3 data, zero dilution risk, the commercial engine of Merck, and violent short-covering mechanics is not financial discipline—it is pure arrogance. The skeptics think this rally is nearing its end; in reality, the paradigm shift is just beginning.

6 Things to Understand About Moderna’s Melanoma mRNA Vaccine

1. This is an Operating System, Not a Pill:

mRNA-4157 (Intismeran autogene) is not a generalized product you pull off a shelf. It is an algorithmic manufacturing pipeline. Moderna and Merck ingest raw, unstructured local data (a patient’s tumor sample), run it through a massively parallel sequencing workflow, and output a customized synthetic mRNA sequence that encodes up to 34 unique neoantigens.

Think of it like this: mRNA-4157 is to oncology what Palantir Foundry is to enterprise software. ChatGPT and Claude are generalized, one-to-many foundational models. Palantir Foundry ingests chaotic, siloed enterprise data and builds a bespoke operational ontology mapping the unique “mutational signature” of a single company. Both platforms operate on the exact same philosophical framework: infrastructure designed for extreme, 1-to-1 mass customization.

This isn’t theoretical. The FDA is literally demanding that Moderna’s machine learning algorithm be submitted alongside the biologic data as part of the regulatory package. The government is treating the software as the drug. You cannot replicate this with off-the-shelf code.

2. Escaping the Blockbuster Patent Trap:

Standard drugs eventually expire and lose their patent exclusivity. Merck’s crown jewel, Keytruda, is essentially the CrowdStrike Falcon of oncology—an incredibly valuable, standard-issue defensive tool. But Keytruda is marching toward a massive patent cliff and facing legitimate, structural competition from Summit Therapeutics.

This is why mRNA-4157 is a massive paradigm shift. Because it is an individualized pipeline, it fundamentally breaks the traditional patent expiration trap. The moat isn’t just a chemical structure; it is the proprietary sequencing algorithm, turnaround speed, and the hundreds of millions Moderna spent building its internal physical manufacturing and software infrastructure. You cannot genericize a bespoke, closed-loop supply chain.

3. BioNTech’s Validation, Moderna’s Execution:

This moment completely validates BioNTech’s foundational thesis, but in biotech, first-mover advantage is everything. BioNTech pioneered the individualized neoantigen concept, but they played it safe. They de-risked their flagship candidate (BNT122) by entering into a deep partnership with Genentech/Roche. By offloading the R&D cost, they ceded absolute control, slowed their timeline, and hard-capped their revenue ceiling.

BioNTech is still grinding through Phase 2 trials for pancreatic and colorectal cancers. Moderna took a highly concentrated approach, absorbed the raw risk, executed faster, and pushed Phase 3 across the finish line years ahead of their rival. In a winner-take-all infrastructure race, BioNTech’s conservative strategy is making them look a distant second-place finisher.

4. The Value is Locked in the IP Trench Warfare:

Do not ignore the legal reality: the absolute value of Moderna and mRNA-4157 is locked in a vicious patent war over the underlying Lipid Nanoparticle (LNP) delivery tech. This is why Moderna pays one of the top legal executives in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, Shannon Thyme Klinger, as their Chief Legal Officer. She is a ruthless, tier-one legal tactician, and her job is to defend the fortress.

Earlier this year, Moderna dropped a staggering $2.25 billion to settle a massive LNP patent dispute with Genevant and Arbutus. Why pay that much? Because controlling the platform IP means controlling the toll bridge for the entire next generation of mRNA therapeutics. Moderna is fighting Pfizer, BioNTech, and Alnylam in a global trench war because if you own the LNP patents, you tax the entire future of the industry. This litigation will dictate who actually captures the long-term margin.

5. The Behavioral Economics of Adoption (Healthy vs. Sick):

We have to separate the underlying mRNA technology from the political baggage of the pandemic. Infectious disease vaccines are inherently a tough sell because you are asking a perfectly healthy person to take a drug that will likely make them feel sick to prevent a statistical probability. It is a breeding ground for political friction.

Oncology completely flips the behavioral economics. You aren’t dealing with a healthy populace; you are dealing with a patient who has had a tumor excised and is staring down the barrel of a lethal relapse. When an individualized therapy can reduce the risk of cancer recurrence by 30 to 50 percent, the calculus is absolute zero: why wouldn’t you take that? The choice isn’t between feeling fine and mildly ill. The choice is between an experimental lifeline and a painful death. This eliminates the political friction and shifts the adoption curve entirely from push to pull.

6. The Peak Revenue Fallacy (The Hunger Games):

Wall Street analysts pricing this asset solely on its “peak adjuvant melanoma sales” are committing financial malpractice. This isn’t just about melanoma. The late-stage data is a proof-of-concept that creates an entirely new therapeutic space for solid tumors. Moderna survived a bloody, decade-long biotech Hunger Games and walked out with the prize.

Retail investors locking in their gains today are going to brutally regret it. If this paradigm shift were a baseball game, we are still in the warm-ups. Would you buy a front-row ticket to the World Series and leave the stadium before the first pitch is even thrown? Selling this news because of near-term scaling costs is missing the forest for the trees. This is a foundational shift in how we treat human disease, and the compounding returns have not even started.

The Headline Trap: Why Moderna Wins with the Lower Number

Pfizer has released Phase 3 data for its mRNA flu vaccine, boasting 34% greater efficacy than the standard flu shot. On paper, this beats Moderna’s candidate, which demonstrated 26.6% efficacy.

If you trade on headlines alone, you buy Pfizer. If you trade on first principles, you recognise the trap.

The trials weren’t even testing the same thing.

The Demographic Divergence: Premium vs. Commodity

Pfizer’s 34.5% victory was achieved exclusively among adults aged 18–64. Moderna’s 26.6% victory, however, came from a massive trial of ~41,000 adults aged $50+, delivering a crucial 27.4% superiority in the 65+ demographic.

The 18–64 bracket is the commodity market. Very few people in this age group die or end up in the ICU from the flu.

The 65+ bracket is the premium market. That’s the group that actually fills hospital beds, racks up billion-dollar Medicare bills, and is the entire reason high-dose shots like Fluzone HD even exist.

Pfizer won the participation-trophy age group. Moderna won the one payer that will pay a premium.

The Influenza B Disaster

Then there’s the Influenza B disaster for Pfizer. This is the part that genuinely shocked me:

Pfizer’s shot was worse than the standard egg-based vaccine against Influenza B strains. Not just “slightly less good”—it missed. There is basically zero chance Pfizer gets this approved as-is.

Moderna faced this exact failure last year. They went back, re-engineered the shot, and the June 2025 data proves they fixed it: 29% greater efficacy against Influenza B.

Why Pfizer is Structurally Screwed

It comes down to structural engineering. The Hemagglutinin protein (the part of the virus the immune system targets) is notoriously unstable. If a company simply prints the basic mRNA instructions (which Pfizer likely did), the protein “flops” or misfolds. The immune system takes a picture of a collapsed building, resulting in weak antibodies.

Moderna didn’t just tweak the dose; they engineered “stabilizing mutations.” Think of it as adding steel scaffolding to the protein so it stands tall in a “pre-fusion” state long enough for the immune system to recognise the correct structure.

The IP Moat

This is the most critical factor: Moderna owns the patent on that scaffolding. US Patent No. 10,925,958 (“Influenza Vaccine”) specifically covers these RNA-encoded, stabilized Hemagglutinin structures.

Pfizer now has to either (a) license it, (b) fight the patent in court, or (c) invent some completely different stabilization method that doesn’t breach Moderna’s claims.

The Investment Thesis: A Strategic Moat

Pfizer’s delay will, at a minimum, miss the 2027 flu season. This ensures Moderna a critical first-mover advantage in the emerging respiratory super-cycle (COVID, Flu, and RSV).

This provides Moderna a clean runway to dominate the premium demographic with a fully validated formulation that works against all four strains, protected by IP that has already survived challenges.

While this development alone doesn’t constitute the ’10-bagger’ moment, it strategically secures Moderna’s position. It creates a robust, defensible business in an evolving market focused on combo COVID/Flu/RSV shots, capable of meeting demand during the next endemic or pandemic.

Crucially, the true value proposition is the robust, validated respiratory vaccine pipeline. This is a foundational step for future platform expansion into latent viruses, oncology, and a wide range of rare diseases. We are likely still very early in realising the full scope of this proprietary mRNA ecosystem.

Moderna: AI Leader in Medicine

Moderna created the Spikevax vaccine, a miracle vaccine that saved millions of lives during the pandemic. Something not mentioned enough is how AI algorithms aided the vaccine in analyzing vast datasets to optimize the mRNA sequence in Spikevax.

While Spikevax isn’t an AI drug, it showed the potential of AI in accelerating and improving drug discovery. Moderna has always been an AI company since its founding in 2014. The impact of AI is seen almost everywhere in Moderna’s value chain, which makes it a leader in the space rather than a company responding to a hot secular trend.

mRNA vaccines have a bright future in medicine, and the story has just begun. mRNA is a molecule that teaches your cells how to produce antibodies that help fight certain diseases. The breakthrough discovery was utilizing Lipid Nanoparticles as a bubble to safely deliver the RNA (a fragile molecule) to its target cell. Once this happened, the technology was no longer theoretical but a signal that medicine had evolved.

The biggest challenge to Moderna and RNA technology is achieving efficient and targeted delivery to the suitable cells within the body. Optimizing RNA delivery efficiency to the desired cells remains a work in progress, but AI is streamlining this process with data analysis, experiment design, and manufacturing processes. These advancements have dramatically improved drug development efficiency, where we are no longer growing our drugs; we are printing them.

With Moderna experiencing tremendous advances in its platform, what does that mean for its future financial outlook?

Moderna estimates its combined annual revenue from its respiratory virus vaccines (COVID-19, RSV, and flu) to reach $8 billion to $15 billion by 2027.

Getting an approved RSV and flu vaccine would help Moderna return its revenue close to its peak during COVID-19, bringing in a whopping $19.3 billion in 2022.

Three approved respiratory virus vaccines may not propel its stock to all-time highs, but it would likely be significantly higher than where the stock trades today: In the 70-130 range.

What would be a paradigm shift for Moderna?

Moderna expects to add $10 billion to $15 billion in annual sales five years after launching new Oncology, Rare, and Latent diseases products by 2028. This is in addition to the previously announced $8 billion to $15 billion of expected sales from the Respiratory Franchise in 2027.

Moderna stock is undervalued and has a good chance of bouncing back. Whether it surpasses where it was in 2021 depends on how many approved vaccines it develops, the pricing, and the market adaption of each new product it launches.

My prediction. Moderna has 1-3 potential home runs in their pipeline outside of Covid. With a plan to launch 15 products in the next five years, one or two will likely be a blockbuster drug.

mRNA-4157 is a potential home run as a future cancer vaccine. Vaccines or therapeutic cancer treatments are always potential game changers because there is no effective cure for cancer. The timeline for a cancer vaccine is a long, unwinding road, but the results have shown promise against Melanoma, the key word being promise. Cancer therapeutics have always shown potential but are primarily unsuccessful. Although progress is very likely in the next five years, whether that will lead to a robust ROI is a complete mystery.

Moderna has many potential vaccines dealing with herpesviruses. There are over a hundred herpesviruses, but eight infect humans. Most people in the world have at least one of the eight herpesviruses:

Herpes simplex virus: double-stranded DNA virus

HSV-1 (oral Herpes): The most common type causes cold sores around the mouth. It can also cause genital Herpes, although this is less common.
HSV-2 (genital Herpes): This type of HSV causes genital Herpes, which can be painful and itchy. It can also be transmitted to a newborn during childbirth.

Human herpesvirus 3 (HHV-3): Varicella-zoster virus (VZV):

VZV is a viral infection that causes chickenpox in children and shingles in adults.

Human herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4): Epstein-Barr virus (EBV):

EBV is a widespread virus that infects most people at some point in their lives. It usually causes no symptoms, but it can sometimes cause Mono, a fever, and swollen glands.

Human herpesvirus 5 (HHV-5): Cytomegalovirus (CMV):

CMV is a common virus that can cause mild symptoms in healthy adults but can be severe for newborns and people with weakened immune systems.

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6): Herpes 6

HHV-6 is a common virus that causes roseola, fever, and rash in young children.

Human herpesvirus 7 (HHV-7): Herpes 7

HHV-7 is a common virus that is often found in people with roseola, but it is not clear if it causes the disease

Human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8): Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV):

KSHV is a virus that can cause Kaposi’s sarcoma, a type of cancer, and multicentric Castleman disease, a rare inflammatory disorder.

There is a common theme with all Herpesviruses:

No cure.
Most people with herpes are asymptomatic: People can be infected with Herpes and not experience any symptoms. These cases often go undetected, contributing to the undercounting of total infections.
Very contagious and easy to spread in various ways.
The CDC does not recommend herpes testing for people without symptoms.

***My test results indicate I have tested equivocal/positive for Herpes Type 2. Herpes Simplex Virus II is also commonly known as Genital Herpes.***

Moderna has programs in development for Herpes simplex 1&2, VZV, EBV, and CMV.

Based on most conservative estimation models, 50% of the global population has oral Herpes, but more than 2 out of 3 people likely have it. Far more people, by a significant amount, have oral Herpes than are obese.

About 1 out of 8 people are more likely to have genital Herpes, but those estimates are likely conservative as well. The exact number is unknown, but it is expected more than 2 out of 10 people worldwide have genital Herpes. The complexity of the virus is that it is easy to spread even without symptoms, and it likely will not require any medical attention. Most people with Herpes do not know it, and the number of those who have recurrent painful outbreaks is in the minority.

Going through the process of getting tested for Herpes gave me insight into how profitable a vaccine would be.

**My Western Blot results for Herpes Type 2, The Gold Standard for Herpes blood tests.**

I recently took an STD Panel test and tested equivocal/positive for Herpes Type 2. I was pretty shocked as I never showed any symptoms. Mentally, it was starting to take a toll on my physique as I became worried every itch or pain was the beginning of an outbreak.

I learned that most standard blood tests for Herpes, when there are no sores or symptoms, are inaccurate. These tests are likely misinterpreting HSV-1 and HSV-2 antibodies with other antibodies your immune system produces.

I live in the only state in the United States that conducts the most accurate or “gold standard” for Herpes blood tests: The Western Blot at The University of Washington Virology Research Clinic. Through a referral from my provider, I was able to get my blood tested in person (anyone out-of-state has to mail their blood sample) and, after a week, received an official negative diagnosis for HSV-2.

Due to the complexity of the virus and the high number of asymptomatic cases or those that experience mild symptoms, a vaccine would create a massive opportunity with high demand and a large market.

Anyone who suffers from frequent outbreaks of Herpes is likely interested in a potential vaccine. More people would probably get tested if a safe vaccine were available, revealing a more prevalent virus than current studies suggest.

Even though Herpes doesn’t seem like a big deal, the stigma and psychology of the virus are real, particularly genital Herpes. How much money would you pay for a vaccine that would likely make having sex more accessible and safer?

Cancer and Herpes are only two potential growth catalysts for Moderna. The company has a long runway for growth, with over 45 developing drugs and 38 ongoing clinical trials. There’s a buffet selection of diseases, even though most of these trials will fail. Getting 10-15 drugs approved in the next five years could give Moderna a higher market cap than any other biotech company.

mRNA technology is still in its infancy. There are hurdles and uncertainty ahead, but the future looks exponentially promising. With many potential applications, this has the feel of the Internet or mobile phone in the early 1990s. Ten years from now, we will not look at mRNA as a fad but as a widely used technology much more significant than we could conceive today.

What’s wildly exciting is that we likely don’t know many things. Investing in what you don’t know is typically seen as a negative, as you can have blind spots toward risk factors. It’s important not to downplay the potential for a blue-sky scenario. The more we understand RNA and how to improve its delivery, the more likely we can see its capabilities and applications increase. Our current expectations may not be high enough. Moderna is developing drugs that can change the world and revolutionize medicine. It is important to remember the miraculous progress made in the past five years.