TD Cowen Says Moderna Is Worth $90. The Market Says $254. The Gap Is Two Companies

Wednesday’s note from TD Cowen was, by the standards of the week, generous. Analyst Tyler Van Buren lifted his Moderna price target from $40 to $90 and kept his Hold rating, citing greater confidence in the adjuvant melanoma setting and in non-small cell lung cancer. The firm’s new estimate for the peak profit potential of the individualized cancer therapy: roughly $3.4 billion in 2035, up from $830 million.

That same session, Moderna’s shares hit $254.48, a 52-week high. Van Buren raised the target more than twofold and still priced the stock at barely more than a third of its market value. The target implies 62.8% downside from Tuesday’s $242.08 close.

He’s not the outlier. Bank of America raised its target to $220 on Monday and kept a Neutral. Citi has a Sell and an $80 target. Fourteen of the 25 analysts tracking the stock say Hold, four say Sell, and the consensus target of $103.95 sits about 59% below the share price. Retail sentiment, bullish days ago, has flipped bearish, according to Stocktwits.

In Hong Kong this week, Stéphane Bancel was talking about flu shots. Moderna’s CEO told Nikkei Asia the company has “a number of ongoing discussions in greater China” about partnerships, with the most immediate focus on infectious diseases: COVID-19, flu, RSV. “China and greater China is really important for Moderna,” he said. “We’d like to play a role there and will most probably do that through a partnership.”

That’s the old Moderna he’s shopping. The $254 stock isn’t priced on flu shots. It’s priced on intismeran autogene, the personalized mRNA cancer vaccine developed with Merck, and on the nine Phase IIb/III trials now running across melanoma, lung, bladder and kidney cancers. The vaccine pitch in China is the vaccine business looking for a home. The cancer business already has one, and in greater China it’s Merck’s: “If successful, Merck will lead commercialization of the therapy in international markets, including greater China,” Bancel told Nikkei. The CEO courting Beijing for vaccine deals has already handed his most valuable asset’s overseas future to his partner.

Bancel has made this trip before. In 2023 he met Shanghai’s Communist Party secretary, signed a memorandum of understanding and a land deal for a Shanghai Minhang headquarters, with local outlet Yicai putting the planned investment near $1 billion — a figure the company never confirmed. Medicines made there would serve the Chinese market only, never exported. Then the push stalled on intellectual property: the company reportedly refused to hand over the mRNA vaccine “recipe” as a precondition for selling in the country. Three years later the discussions are “ongoing” again, while Washington weighs curbs on American biotech deals in China and Beijing proposes adding five biotech technologies to its export-control list.

So what does $90 believe, and what does $254 believe? Van Buren’s number prices one therapy’s peak profits: $3.4 billion to Moderna in 2035, split 50/50 with Merck, against $6.9 billion in cash and investments and a vaccine business doing $94 million a quarter. Even a generous ten times that peak profit is $34 billion — barely a third of the $98 billion market cap. The rest of the $254 has to come from the platform reading across: Jefferies’ Andrew Tsai models $54 billion in unadjusted global peak sales across indications, with melanoma alone topping $3 billion on a 60% peak share, an 85% probability of commercialization and a $260,000 treatment price. The Nasdaq-100 inclusion on October 9 forces index funds to buy regardless of the debate. And the comparator drug in the trial, Keytruda, is doing about $32 billion in sales this year.

$484.47. That was the record high in 2021. The five-year low was $22.36 last November. The current price is about eleven times that low and roughly half the all-time peak.

1,137 patients. That’s the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial — intismeran plus Keytruda versus Keytruda alone in resected stage IIB–IV melanoma — which met its recurrence-free and distant metastasis-free endpoints in August without disclosing a number. The Phase 2b hazard ratio was 0.51 at five years. William Blair’s Matt Phipps calls anything at or below 0.70 positive. Leerink’s Daina Graybosch says below 0.60 on either endpoint would be “exciting and standard-of-care-changing.” UBS’s Michael Yee translates 0.65 into a 35% recurrence reduction and a 10–20% stock rally. The caution, from one oncologist in MarketWatch’s preview: mid-stage signals from 157 patients can water down when 1,137 are counted.

“We believe the outcomes will support the excitement, and we see low probability of data that resolve the main debates (potential beyond melanoma and profitability),” wrote Leerink’s Daina Graybosch in a note to investors this week. “Detailed RFS and DMFS hazard ratios, absolute landmark rates, confidence intervals, stage-specific analyses, event timing, treatment receipt, manufacturing turnaround, and safety will determine the readout’s clinical and commercial quality,” wrote Jefferies’ Andrew Tsai. Citi’s Geoff Meacham, who downgraded the stock to Sell in September, noted that Moderna’s market capitalization now resembles Regeneron’s despite “materially lower expected revenue and earnings.” On OzBargain, where retail holders argue the bull case, one skeptic put the pricing question plainly: “But at $200k, who pays and who do we save?”

Moderna presents the full Phase 3 data at ESMO’s Presidential Symposium on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. ET, with an investor webcast at 1 p.m. Third-quarter results follow on November 6.