The pharmaceutical giant Merck has revealed that it’s sold all of its shares in the biotech company Moderna on the public markets. The company didn’t reveal the exact amount it made from the sale of its shares and only announced that it exited its entire stake in Moderna, which has notably surged over 600% this year thanks to being a major contender for the production of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Merck had invested $50 million in Moderna in 2015 when it was still a private company and backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding. Moderna went public in 2018 in an IPO that raised $600 million for its operations despite it having no product yet but hopes of pioneering a new class of drugs based on the relatively new messenger RNA (mRNA) molecular system. 

Moderna’s hopes came to fruition this year when a Covid-19 pandemic swept through the world and led it to dedicate its resources towards developing a vaccine for the virus. Moderna has already come up with a vaccine and performed Phase 3 tests that showed an efficacy rate of 94.5%, it said. 

Moderna now awaits approval for its vaccine from global health agencies, particularly from the US and the UK with which it’s contracted to supply tens of millions of doses. If its vaccine gets a greenlight, Moderna could make up to $35 billion in revenues if it produces enough doses to meet demand. The company has already said that it’s looking to produce between 500 million to 1 billion doses annually beginning next year.

Merck’s announcement of the exit of its Moderna stake saw Moderna’s shares go down by up to 9% during early trading hours on Wednesday but later rose back up 2.5% to $144.50 apiece.

Photo: Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier by World Economic Forum is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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