Why are Moderna shares rising?

• Moderna shares closed 1.6% higher on Wednesday (15 September 2021)
• The biotech company said a new study suggests waning immunity for its vaccine
• The results point to the need for a booster dose of the mRNA-1273
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Moderna stock price analysis: what’s the latest?

Moderna’s stock rallied as much as 2.3% on Wednesday, after the company said there is enough data from its latest study to support the benefit of a booster vaccine dose.

Investors have been buying up Moderna shares since health authorities around the world started to discuss the efficacy of a booster shot a few months back.

Countries like the UK, US, Israel and Singapore have already started rolling out vaccine booster plans for their older residents in the coming weeks and months.

As a result of more vaccines being needed, the Moderna market capitalisation has more than doubled in the last three months.

In the last one month alone, share price has spiked up over 16%.

Despite the uptrend, the stock still has a consensus rating of ‘hold’ and a price target of only US$195.62, based on the latest analyst data published by MarketBeat.

The price target actually equates to a massive 55% potential downside from Moderna’s last traded price of US$434.50. This indicates that analysts believe the stock is severely overvalued.

The latest rating came from US investment bank SVB Leerink, which reiterated a ‘sell’ call on the stock on 12 September 2021.

'Impact of waning immunity' in vaccine

On Wednesday, the vaccine maker said 88 breakthrough cases of Covid-19 occurred in a more recently vaccinated group (49 cases per 1000 person-years) compared to 162 cases in a group vaccinated last year (77.1 cases per 1000 person-years).

The reduction in incidence rates for participants vaccinated more recently compared to participants vaccinated last year was 36%.

There were also 19 severe cases observed. Moderna said that while this was ‘not significant’, there was a ‘numerical trend towards a lower rate of severe cases’ in the group vaccinated more recently (3.3 per 1000 person-years) compared to the group vaccinated last year (6.2 per 1000 person-years).

‘The increased risk of breakthrough in this analysis quantifies the impact of waning immunity in the COVE study between the median follow-up time of 8 months and 13 months since first dose,’ the biotech company said in a press release.

‘The company believes this adds to evidence of potential benefit of a booster dose of mRNA-1273. A manuscript has been submitted as a preprint to medRxiv and will be submitted for peer-reviewed publication.’

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