Moderna CEO talks Omicron booster shots, 2022 COVID-19 vaccine sales forecasts, global vaccination

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel joins Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani to discuss the development of an Omicron-specific booster shot, global vaccination efforts, data on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, and raised forecasts for vaccine sales and production in 2022.

Video Transcript

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: I'm Anjalee Khemlani, and I am here to speak with a special guest, the CEO of Moderna, Stephane Bancel, about all things COVID and the vaccine as well as more tied to the JPM Annual Health Conference. Stephane, thanks again for joining us today. It's been a while since we've spoke, but we clearly have a lot of catching up to do.

Omicron is now here and has completely ruined our plans to have this chat in person, so let's talk about that first. The vaccine right now, we're looking at sort of starting the discussions of a fourth dose here in the US, but I know that you have been focused on an Omicron-specific booster as well. Talk to me about what you're thinking in terms of how we need to continue fighting this virus.

STEPHANE BANCEL: Well, good morning, and thank you for the invitation. I will start by saying, first, let's look at the short term. I think we need to make sure as many people can get the booster as possible. As you know through real-world evidence, there's very strong data coming, including from the UK, showing that people who get three Moderna doses are extremely well protected against the Omicron variant. We see very high efficacy against infection person-to-person in the short term, and we see very strong protection against hospitalization and deaths.

Actually, just Singapore just came out with very interesting data showing Moderna is the best weapon to protect against deaths against any other vaccines, so that's for where we are today. So people who don't have a booster, please go get your booster. If you know people who are not vaccinated, please make sure they get vaccinated.

So as we look forward, we need to be ready for whatever evolution gives us, and so we are working on a lot of different boosters in the clinic as we speak. We should get the Omicron-specific booster in the clinic in the coming weeks, but we also have an alpha, and beta, and the delta booster in the clinic. And we are also going to look at combinations and discussing with public health leaders, like in the US, UK, Europe, and around the world, to figure out what product do they want to be ready for fall of 2022.

We are very blessed that in '21 we just announced we shipped 807 million doses. 25% of those doses went to low-income and middle-income country, which is wonderful, and that translates into around $17.5 billion of sales for '21. One of the things we did this morning is actually increase our expectations for sales for '22. On November 4th quarter record, we had said we had already signed contracts. We've done payments for $17 billion for 2022, and we had options for up to $3 billion.

This morning we are upgrading those numbers. What we have now is signed APAs for $18.5 billion. Recently the UK, and Switzerland, and South Korea placed large orders for fall of 2022. And the options have now gone up to $3.5 billion.

But what is important to know is there are still a lot of discussions ongoing for the fall of 2022, and the numbers I gave is very heavily tilted toward the first half of the year. So many more discussions to come as governments get ready for '22, and already some countries have already signed orders for '23, like the UK and Taiwan, who want to make sure they get-- secure their supply.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. And this definitely falls in line with what you've told us repeatedly, which is that 2022 was really where you're going to see that ramp up of supply. And I'm glad you brought up the low and middle-income countries because I feel like that's something that we haven't quite addressed as much. There have been discussions about either vaccine hesitancy on the ground or the inability to absorb specifically mRNA vaccines. What has been your experience, and what do you think Moderna can do to really help improve the situation as we've seen there still is a need to vaccinate the world?

STEPHANE BANCEL: Sure. So if you look at vaccinating low-income country, there's two pieces of the problem. There is the supply of vaccines, and then there is the ability to get doses in arms. So the supply of vaccines clearly in the first half to maybe up to September of 2021, there was a supply issue. Every country wanted vaccines put in the people, and there was not enough supply for the planet.

But this has changed drastically. In the fall, we really saw a total switch going from undersupply to oversupply of vaccines, including for low-income countries. In November, for example, in any given day of the week, we had between 50 and 100 million doses sitting in the warehouse waiting to be shipped to low-income country via COVAX. And we announced this morning in our press release that the African Union has announced to us last week that they do not want the Q2 reservation, which was for 60 million doses. They do not need it.

They informed us that between the COVAX supply, the Chinese donation, the US government donation, the EU donations, they have more vaccine than they need to get them in arms. But the challenge they have is getting them in arms. They don't have enough nurses, doctors, vaccination centers. As you know, transportation is an issue for people that are in remote areas, so I think we need to do much more as the world to help for the last mile, getting doses in arms. It is not anymore a problem of doses.

If you look at what the industry has done, it is really remarkable. We are now moving to a situation where we have more doses available than people wanting vaccines, which is a great place to be. And the amount of vaccines are really showing we are different for real-world evidence. Again, Singapore last week show that the vaccine that best protect against death is the Moderna vaccine. And if you look at the high-income country, it's mostly in the mRNA market.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right. Absolutely. And to that point, you're also setting the stage for more absorption of mRNA products with the buildup that you've created now of mRNA manufacturing. So on that point, talk to us about what the outlook is, especially for '22 for Moderna. Beyond the COVID vaccine, you do have a number of other things in the pipeline. Do we see more of that come out because it seems like that's something that, specifically for a company like Moderna, that investors would be really interested in.

STEPHANE BANCEL: Sure. I mean, I always remind people that while the COVID-19 vaccine is very important for the pandemic, is very important in terms of sales-- $17.5 billion last year as I said already, 18.5 signed this year, plus the option, plus more discussions ongoing. This is a very important product no doubt. But mRNA is an information molecule. Moderna has built a platform.

For 10 years, we were capital constrained. Well, we finished 2021 with $17 billion of cash. And so if you think about it, we announced this morning that in terms of investment, for example, we invested in 2019 pre-pandemic $500 million in R&D.

Well, guess what? This year our plan is to invest $2.5 to $3 billion. That's five to six X more investment, and we have now 40 programs in development. And there are many more in the labs that are going to move into development from the labs. In CapEx, we invested less than $100 million in 2019.

Well, this year we're going to invest around $800 million, so it's kind of over eight X increase in capital investment in plant in Canada, our plant in Australia, our plant in Africa, more investment in the US. And so people, I think, don't appreciate where Moderna is going. We have a platform. In this industry, there has never been a platform. As you follow the field, you know when you have a company getting one product to market, everybody is scratching their heads, OK, what's our next product?

Well, Moderna has 40, 4-0, in development. Very excited about flu, flu combining with COVID. One single dose a year, you get your COVID booster adapted to a variant of the year. You get your flu booster adapted to also the strain of flu of that year, and then we will keep adding components.

There are around 10 viruses that cause hospitalization because of infecting people in their respiratory system, and we want us to stop that. We believe the world deserves a single annual shot that protects you against those 10 viruses so people don't get sick, don't get hospitalized, and don't die of respiratory virus. In 2022, people should not be dying of respiratory viruses. The technology exists, and Moderna will not stop until we have that broad protection for people around the world.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Sounds good. Well, we'll definitely have to keep an eye on that, and, hopefully, what you've been able to build up through the pandemic for manufacturing plays a role in how we see the world absorb that. We'll have to leave it there for now, but thank you again for joining us. Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, really a pleasure to have you on again.

STEPHANE BANCEL: Thank you.