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In a recent YouTube video from "The Lotus Eaters", one of the anchors states that "During the previous quarter, Moderna's earnings on their shares were 4.97 billion overall, and the COVID vaccine out of that was 4.81 billion" The anchor then states that this is 99%+, but the calculations come out to 96.8%, which for the purposes of this is the figure in question.

For any quarter during which Moderna had its vaccine released, did 96.8% of its income, net income, or gross revenue come from streams related to COVID-19, or the COVID-19 vaccine?

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    It's their first product that got FDA approval, IIRC. So it's pretty typical for a biopharma startup. It's kind of hilarious that the video chucks this under "big pharma". (And the other big pharma like Pfizer and AZ only got into this game by buying or partnering with a smaller or academic one BioNTech or Oxford's vaccine research unit.)
    – Fizz
    Dec 7, 2021 at 0:13
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    It's a startup--they have basically one product. Of course their revenue comes from that product!
    – Loren Pechtel
    Dec 7, 2021 at 4:13
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    They specialize in mRNA vaccines which is relatively new technology fully funded by investments. They were in the perfect position when the demand hit for a new vaccine. Had it not, they would still have no profit and working off of investments, probably entering the flu vaccine market likely reaching profitability if the vaccine was more affective than the current flu vaccine.
    – rtaft
    Dec 7, 2021 at 13:56
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    To put it in perspective, "pharma revenues worldwide totaled 1.27 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020." statista.com/topics/1764/global-pharmaceutical-industry/… So this makes up less than half a percent of the total industry's revenue. It's also not clear to me whether these "earnings" are revenue or profit. I wasn't able to find the number of Moderna doses, but apparently the total over all companies is 8B. If we take, say, 2B of those, that's $2.40 earnings per dose, which isn't exactly raking in the cash, and it probably costs close to that to make a dose.
    – Acccumulation
    Dec 7, 2021 at 22:10
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    So what's the other 4% that this company, that I'd never heard of 2y ago, do?
    – Mazura
    Dec 8, 2021 at 19:46

1 Answer 1

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Yes, it appears to be the case based on the financial reports that they released. It seems that due to the large number of doses they sold over the quarter/year (208M/510M), they were able to make a large amount of revenue from it. According to Moderna Reports Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Financial Results And Provides Business Updates:

revenue: Total revenue was $5.0 billion for the three months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $157 million for the same period in 2020. Total revenue was $11.3 billion for the nine months ended September 30, 2021, compared to $232 million for the same period in 2020. Total revenue increased in 2021 as a result of commercial sales of the Company's COVID-19 vaccine, and to a lesser extent, grant revenue. Product sales for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 were $4.8 billion and $10.7 billion, respectively, from sales of 208 million and 510 million doses of the Company's COVID-19 vaccine for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, respectively. The increase in grant revenue of $286 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021 was primarily driven by an increase in revenue from BARDA related to the Company's COVID-19 vaccine development. Grant revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2021 was relatively flat compared to the same period in 2020.

Specifically:

Product sales for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 were $4.8 billion and $10.7 billion, respectively, from sales of 208 million and 510 million doses of the Company's COVID-19 vaccine for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021, respectively.

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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation about whether companies can legally operate with no sales has been moved to chat.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Dec 7, 2021 at 2:29

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