If you invested $10,000 in Moderna at the end of 2019, this is how much you have today

moderna (mRNA 0.64%) It was one of the hottest stocks during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout a few years ago. But recently, the hype has cooled considerably. The company faces big questions about its future growth, and there’s no longer as much bullish vibe surrounding the stock. The stock price fell nearly 45% in 2023.

Moderna investors may be looking back and pondering how things have gone so far. Let’s see how much profit an investor could make today if they invested $10,000 in stocks before the pandemic.

Moderna’s locations of business before the pandemic

As of the end of 2019, Moderna had posted cumulative losses of $1.5 billion since its founding in 2009, making it a high-risk company to invest in.

At the time, the company primarily generated revenue from collaborations and grants. However, the $60 million in 2019 is far from covering the company’s operating expenses, which totaled $606 million that year. Although the company had more than 20 programs in the pipeline at year’s end, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the business.

At the end of 2019, the stock price was just over $19.

Moderna stock’s closing price in 2019 was $19.56. That was about two weeks after a group of patients in Wuhan, China, began experiencing symptoms of the pneumonia-like illness.

If you had invested $10,000 in healthcare stocks on the last day of 2019, you would have acquired approximately 525 shares of the company. The stock soared to a high of over $400 in 2021, before crashing in recent years.

The company is currently trading at about $100, making these 525 shares worth about $52,500. Investors who held on despite the stock’s 45% drop last year will be far ahead of where they were four years ago.By comparison, a similar size investment S&P500 Its current value would be approximately $16,000.

Moderna has made big profits from sales of its coronavirus vaccine. The first human trials of a COVID-19 vaccine began in March 2020, and the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine in December of the same year. Moderna stock is up 143% in 2021.

Moderna’s future is once again uncertain.

Moderna’s management is optimistic about the future, but investors are understandably feeling more than a healthy dose of skepticism. This is a transitional year, with Moderna projecting total sales of just $4 billion, a far cry from the $19 billion it reported in 2022. The company definitely expects organic growth next year and expects to reach that number by 2026. break even.

That’s an ambitious goal for Moderna, considering its net loss for the first nine months of 2023 was $4.9 billion, outstripping revenue of $4 billion. The company will need to make adjustments to streamline its business, but it will also need revenue growth accelerators. The company is working on multiple products, including a combined COVID-19 and influenza vaccine, a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, and a cancer vaccine in development. Merck.

But at this point, there’s no certainty that Moderna will return to profitability or even strong growth anytime soon. The company had a number of programs in his 2019 pipeline (including multiple personalized cancer vaccines), and it was the unexpected coronavirus pandemic that ultimately proved to be a game-changer for the business. It was a viral infection vaccine.

Investors should be careful not to assume that holding more assets will lead to future earnings growth or a safer business in the long run.

Is Moderna worth investing in today?

Given the high prices reached in 2021, it’s tempting to think Moderna stock is undervalued. But it’s difficult to accurately value this business, given all the variables, including which products will win approval and how much cost savings will be achieved. What will happen to the demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the future?

Moderna’s market capitalization of $40 billion is not cheap for a company with only $4 billion in revenue this year. The safest approach for investors is to sit back and watch how the company performs. This could be a volatile stock for the foreseeable future.