Citi Slams Moderna's Valuation as MRNA Stock Falls Premarket

Moderna's stock took a hit in premarket trading on Wednesday after Citi downgraded the biotech company from Neutral to Sell, citing stretched valuation despite its momentum in cancer vaccine development.

The analyst, Geoff Meacham, noted that Moderna's market capitalization is now similar to Regeneron, but with materially lower expected revenue and earnings. This led him to raise his price target for MRNA shares to $80 from $60, still below the stock's current level.

The downgrade comes after a 222% surge in MRNA shares since the INTerpath-001 results were announced. The trial, which evaluated intismeran autogene in combination with Merck's KEYTRUDA, met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival.

Investors will receive more detailed data from the trial at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in October. The INTerpath program is also being evaluated across other tumor types, including nine Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials spanning melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cell carcinoma.