Moderna stock has been on a long-term downtrend since the pandemic, and following a sharp run-up in June that saw shares gain nearly 50%, momentum appears to be fading.

Moderna fell 6.4% to $74.63 on Wednesday. While initially the worst performer in the benchmark S&P 500, it pared back losses slightly to sit just behind credit card issuer Synchrony Financial.

The drop comes just days after the stock hit a major milestone. After skyrocketing 48% in June -- far outpacing the benchmark index's 1.1% loss -- the stock closed at $81.80 on Monday, marking its highest closing level since August 2024, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Shares have slid since then, losing nearly 9% over the past two sessions. Wednesday's move might stem from standard portfolio reshuffling: Investors appeared to be favoring information-technology stocks, with names like Akamai Technologies, Broadcom, and Arista Networks leading the S&P 500.

After all, there wasn't much material news to drive Moderna shares lower, save for a Morgan Stanley note on Wednesday previewing earnings from several pharmaceutical companies. The firm rates Moderna stock at Equal Weight with a $39 price target, up from $33 -- suggesting shares could fall 48% from current levels.

Other firms have been incrementally more negative. Shares are rated Underweight at BofA Securities, where analyst Alex Stranahan acknowledged in a research note Tuesday that shares had been "on a tear" as of late. He raised his price target slightly to $38 from $34.

Stranahan reiterated expectations for a muted second quarter given Moderna's prior revenue guidance and a wealth of recent pipeline updates. "While recent updates are beginning to form a picture of future growth, we see shares as having overshot implied value from upcoming data readouts," he wrote.

In fact, Stranahan sees "more risk to the downside," particularly as it relates to upcoming data for Moderna's personalized skin cancer vaccine, intismeran, which the firm previously described as a "key near-term catalyst" for the stock.

BofA expects preliminary results showing whether the vaccine works to prevent the cancer from returning will be released by the second half of the year.

Although a win on this front could make the case for regulatory approval for melanoma as well as other indications such as bladder and renal cell cancer, BofA believes this expectation is already baked into the stock price, with Stranahan writing that he sees shares "as mostly valuing a positive readout and uptake."

There are even more catalysts further down the line. Shares popped at the end of June following Moderna's investor day, where the drugmaker unveiled its first in vivo CAR-T program.

In vivo CAR-T therapy engineers a patient's T-cells to fight disease directly inside the body, making it significantly more cost-effective than traditional ex vivo therapy, which involves harvesting cells and modifying them in a lab.

Lin Guey, Moderna's chief scientific officer of therapeutics research, noted that the approach builds on the company's validated messenger RNA technology. "Because it is off-the-shelf, you're doing this in a person's body, it is scalable," Guey added.

Moderna plans to begin clinical development of its first in vivo CAR-T candidate in 2027.

Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com

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July 08, 2026 15:58 ET (19:58 GMT)

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