Datasets:

---

Recag

/

Rp_CommonC_510

like 0

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.barrons.com/articles/moderna-stocks-valuation-is-just-too-high-analyst-says-51595255413\nModerna Stock Is Too Expensive, Analyst Says. It’s Now 10% Cheaper.\nJosh Nathan-Kazis\nUpdated July 20, 2020 11:01 am ET / Original July 20, 2020 10:30 am ET\nJoseph Prezioso/Getty Images\nHow high is too high?\nIn a note out Monday, J.P. Morgan analyst Cory Kasimov wrote that he is bullish on Moderna, the biotech company behind the most-hyped of the Covid-19 vaccine programs. But he says that he can no longer support the stock’s valuation.\nShares of Moderna (ticker: MRNA) were up 385% so far this year as of the close of the market on Friday. The company’s market capitalization had hit $37 billion. Moderna has no approved products, though it has a large pipeline of drugs and vaccines based on the same novel technology as its potential Covid-19 vaccine.\n“With MRNA now sporting a $37B market cap despite a significant number of unknowns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic broadly and the vaccine opportunity specifically… we find it increasingly difficult to pull additional levers in our model any further at this point,” Kasimov wrote.\nThe stock could jump higher thanks to its existing momentum, as more investors jump into the rally, or on more positive data for the Covid-19 vaccine, he wrote. He said he would advise buying if the stock was cheaper.\nBut for now, he wrote, “we’re simply unable to continue to fundamentally justify it.”\nKasimov downgraded the stock to Neutral, from Overweight, and set a target of $89 for the stock price. The stock closed Friday at $94.85.\nShares were down about 12% at $83.44 on Monday.. In addition to Kasimov’s downgrade, two of Moderna’s competitors unveiled promising data on their Covid-19 programs on Monday morning. Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) disclosed data from a German Phase 1/2 trial of their vaccine that showed that in addition to eliciting neutralizing antibodies, the vaccine elicited a T-cell response at low dose levels. And The Lancet published a paper on a Phase 1 trial of AstraZeneca (AZN) and Oxford University’s vaccine, which also appeared very promising.\nModerna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the downgrade.\nIn his note, Kasimov wrote that adding Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine to his financial model added $16 per share to his estimate of the stock’s fair value.\n“Although we acknowledge that forecasting the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and thus the market potential for a COVID-19 vaccine is rife with uncertainties and is almost surely to be wrong, we conducted 3 different scenario analyses around how this could potentially play out,” Kasimov wrote.\nHe said that he assumed that the vaccine will cost $10 per dose, and that the program has a 60% chance of success.\nHe also wrote that he estimates that Moderna’s scientific platform is worth $25 billion, noting that that is a number “far exceeding any of our other companies under coverage.”\nWrite to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com"