Moderna Slides Another 4% as Detailed Melanoma Data Fails to Halt Selloff
MRNA has more than doubled off its 52-week low of $22.28 on light trading volume (0.1× avg).
Summary
Moderna fell another 4.04% to $194.45 in Friday premarket, extending Thursday's 17%+ plunge tied to the leaked intismeran melanoma abstract. Late Thursday the company and Merck published the full Phase 3 INTerpath-001 results: the combination cut recurrence or death risk by 42% versus Keytruda alone, with a 38% reduction in distant metastasis risk, and a 58% reduction in recurrence risk in the post-six-month sensitivity analysis. ESMO said it is not able to establish the precise circumstances that led to the leak of the Moderna-Merck data. William Blair's Myles Minter called it a sell-the-news reaction, noting the data delivered the HR of 0.6 or better investors wanted and that shares were still up 525% year to date before Thursday's drop. The debate now is valuation and how far the vaccine extends across tumor types, not whether the trial worked. Merck is the partner on intismeran but the price action and thesis risk sit with Moderna.
At the time of this announcement, MRNA was trading at $183.84 on NASDAQ in the Life Sciences sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $73.4B. The 52-week trading range was $22.28 to $254.48. This news item was assessed with negative market sentiment and an importance score of 7 out of 10. Source: Benzinga.