In August 2021, investors in biotech firms Moderna and BioNTech were riding high. Both companies were raking in billions of dollars in profits from their successful Covid-19 vaccines as governments around the world pushed people to get vaccinated – and paid the bill. Both stocks hit a peak on August 9 that year, boasting a combined market capitalization of $304 billion; At $195 billion Moderna was worth more than Merck, which had more than three times its revenues.
Forbes counted eight billionaires from the two companies at the time, worth a combined $116 billion. They ranged from identical twin brothers Andreas and Thomas Struengmann, early backers of BioNTech who had ridden the stock to a $31 billion fortune apiece, to Moderna president Stephen Hoge, with a $2.6 billion net worth.
It’s almost all gone. Hit by a one-two punch of plunging vaccination rates and the reluctance of governments worldwide to continue to pay for them, Moderna and BioNTech now trade 95% and 78% below their peaks, respectively. Five of those eight billionaires are still members of the three-comma club, but they are now worth less than a third of what they once were, a combined $28.8 billion.
More bad news for the companies came in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic, who Donald Trump chose as his secretary of health and human services, giving him oversight of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Since his confirmation to the position in February, he’s unleashed the predictable chaos: Firing the thousands of federal healthcare employees, including the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and dismissing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), which issues recommendations on how vaccines should be used. (He then replaced them with a hand-picked panel of vastly less-experienced advisors, including two outspoken opponents of Covid-19 vaccines.)
“After the election when RFK definitively got voted in, the sector had a massive correction,” says Yaron Werber, a senior biotech analyst at investment bank TD Cowen. “And since then, every time there's been a discussion on Covid vaccines, there's been corrections along the way.”
Despite pandemic-era promises of new-fangled mRNA vaccines for everything from HIV to influenza, both Moderna and BioNTech are still almost entirely financially reliant on Covid-19 vaccines. A full 95% of Moderna's $3.2 billion in revenue last year came from Covid-19 vaccine sales; the equivalent figure for BioNTech was 88% of its $3 billion in revenue.
“Even before RFK was making noise, you weren't seeing a ton of use of Covid vaccines,” says Evan Seigerman, a senior biotech and pharma analyst at BMO Capital Markets. Moderna and BioNTech’s shares fell in late 2021 through 2022, alongside U.S. vaccination rates. By October 2022, only 34% of Americans had received a booster shot, a steep drop from the 80% who had received at least one dose. Globally, only 32% of people had received at least one booster by December 2023, compared to 67% who got the initial vaccines, according to the World Health Organization.
Uptake of subsequent boosters has remained low. According to CDC data, only 23% of Americans got a Covid booster shot for the 2023-24 season by August 2024. That rate wasn’t much higher among the elderly, who are more vulnerable to the disease. Just 40% of Americans over age 65 got the booster last year.
The Trump administration’s policies will undoubtedly push those numbers even further down. In August, the FDA approved Moderna and BioNTech’s most recent Covid-19 vaccines but restricted them to adults over 65 years old. Younger folks are only supposed to get the vaccine if they have a high risk of severe complications from the disease. That marked a change from previous policy, where the shot was approved for all adults. On September 19, the new, less-mainstream version of the ACIP came close to requiring a prescription for all Covid-19 vaccines, which would have made it far more complicated to get a routine booster shot. The panel ultimately decided against it.
“The way that these vaccines are issued to the public, it's very different from a traditional drug approval,” says Myles Minter, a biotech analyst at brokerage William Blair. “You get approval by the FDA, but then you have to get recommendations from the ACIP that are adopted by the CDC that then enable payers to cover those vaccines.”
In August, Moderna revised its 2025 sales guidance to a range between $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion, which would mark a 32% decline from last year at the high end of that range. BioNTech projects revenues for this year between $2 billion and $2.6 billion, a 20% drop from 2024 on the high end.
“With this rough start to the vaccine season, I'd argue that most people think [Moderna’s] probably going to be at the bottom end,” says TD Cowen analyst Tyler van Buren.
Moderna appears to be more vulnerable to a downturn than BioNTech does. It developed its Covid-19 vaccine alone, while BioNTech partnered with pharma titan Pfizer, splitting 50% of the profits but also reducing its risk. Moderna is also more reliant on the U.S. market, which made up 56% of its Covid vaccine sales last year, compared to 37% for BioNTech and Pfizer. Those partners are also dominant in the U.S. with about 60% of the market—with Moderna trailing behind with roughly 40%—and have also locked up multi-year contracts with several European governments, giving them more than 80% of that market.
BioNTech and Moderna have also taken different approaches with the billions of dollars in cash they amassed during the peak years of vaccine sales. Since 2021, Moderna has spent $5.3 billion buying back its own shares, in retrospect not the wisest of investments. It’s also spent about $16.2 billion on R&D over the same time frame, leaving it with just about $7.5 billion in cash and securities remaining on its balance sheet as of June.
“If Moderna management had known that demand for Covid vaccines would evolve the way it has, would they have changed anything? They probably would have,” says Morningstar’s Andersen. “I don't think they would've done share buybacks.”
BioNTech has been a bit thriftier. As of June, it still has $19 billion in cash and investments, basically the same as the $19.5 billion it had in 2023, even while it’s spent $8.9 billion on R&D. Unlike Moderna, it spent only $1.8 billion on share buybacks and some $520 million on a special dividend in 2022.
“[BioNTech] has a much better balance sheet. They burn much less cash because they're also partnered with other companies,” says TD Cowen’s Werber.
They also have a broader portfolio. Originally founded by oncologists, BioNTech is pivoting back to cancer treatments. They spent $800 million last year acquiring Chinese biotech outfit Biotheus, which makes an antibody called BNT327 that encourages the immune system to attack cancer cells. They are partnering with Bristol Myers Squibb (who paid them $1.5 billion upfront) to commercialize BNT327, sharing profits (and losses) 50/50 as they did with Pfizer and the Covid-19 vaccine. That limits the downside.
“Investors would like to never think about Covid and respiratory vaccines again,” says Daina Graybosch, a biotech analyst at Leerink Partners. “They'd very much like to think about this oncology portfolio.”
Although Moderna has a small oncology program it remains more focused on respiratory vaccines, and its only other product on the market other than the Covid-19 shot is a vaccine against RSV, a virus that infects the nose, throat and lungs. But the RSV vaccine and Moderna’s combo flu/Covid shot have both run into roadblocks from the FDA and CDC. Sales have suffered as a result: Moderna only generated $27 million from the RSV vaccine since it was approved in May 2024.
“RSV was long considered to be a blockbuster franchise, [but] what we've seen is a very, very restrictive recommendation,” says William Blair’s Minter.
But despite trying to wean themselves off from their dependence on the Covid-19 vaccine, the fortunes of both companies still depend heavily on the whims of President Trump. The went to the moon under his Project Warp Speed. Now they are suffering through his appointment of an anti-vaxxer to as his health secretary. But things can change fast in Trump world. Or as Graybosch from Leerink Partners puts it: “If Trump wakes up and decides he's going to get a Nobel prize for Project Warp Speed and fires RFK, I'm sure the stock will go up.”