Moderna: A shot in the arm
Moderna became a household name during the pandemic when it rushed to develop a vaccine against Covid, and investor excitement drove its market capitalisation to within a whisker of $200bn. A couple of bumper years in 2021 and 2022 saw revenues hit $18.5bn and $19.3bn respectively. Then the threat of Covid receded, demand for the jab collapsed, and Moderna’s market capitalisation dropped to around $25bn as it recorded revenue of just $1.9bn in 2025.
By the end of July about 13.5% of its shares were being sold short, the 14th most shorted in the S&P 500. This undoubtedly means a few traders are going to have to polish their crystal balls after news came out of successful trials for a skin cancer vaccine, and the share price promptly shot up by 177%. Moderna is developing the therapy with Merck, and the plan is to produce a custom-made vaccine for every patient depending on their specific tumours.
Historically, cancer has been treated with surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and targeted drugs. But over the past decade some of the most promising developments have used immunotherapy, encouraging a patient’s immune system to destroy cancerous cells. Moderna and Merck say that their combined treatment showed statistically significant improvements in stopping cancer from redeveloping and spreading in patients whose melanomas have been removed, and the big hope is that this success will be replicated across the rest of Moderna’s cancer-vaccine platform. Clearly the complexity of sequencing a tumour’s mutations and developing a personalised vaccine means that this treatment is never going to be cheap, but it’s certainly progress.
Klarna: Darn those hausfraus
Klarna spends its whole time making it as easy as possible for its clients to spend their money up front, in instalments or at some indefinite point in the distant future. So it must be a little frustrating when they prove reluctant to step up and do their duty. This is the problem that is facing the company, particularly in Germany, its largest market by volume, where the hausfrau in the street seems obstinately determined to keep her pfennigs in her pocket, as consumer confidence in Europe’s biggest economy languishes at a three-year low.
This caused Klarna to lower its forecasts for the year, catching Wall Street on the hop and pushing its share price down 21% on the day of the announcement, taking its decline year-to-date to about 46%. Its prospects look more promising in the US, its fastest-growing market. Overall it ended the quarter with around 120-million active customers, up 8% year on year, while its merchant network was up 54% to 1.2-million. Total revenue for the quarter was up 27%, generating a profit of $9m against a $53m loss the year before.
Klarna announced that its CFO and chief marketing officer would be stepping down at the start of next year, and it is looking to recruit a New York-based CFO to strengthen its presence there and to keep closer to the stock market and the investor relations community. It has applied for a US banking licence, and is looking to transform itself into something more akin to a traditional bank, with a wider range of financial products for its customers.
