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Moderna posted a surprise quarterly profit, in part boosted by deferred revenue, even as the company saw slumping sales from its Covid vaccine, its only marketable product. 
The results cap a rocky year for the biotech company and other Covid vaccine makers.
Moderna reiterated its full-year 2024 sales guidance of roughly $4 billion.

Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Moderna on Thursday posted a surprise quarterly profit, boosted by deferred revenue and cost cuts, even as the company saw slumping sales from its Covid vaccine, its only marketable product.
The results cap a rocky year for the biotech company and other Covid vaccine makers, which all saw revenue plunge as the world continued to emerge from pandemic and relied less on protective shots and treatments.

Here’s what Moderna reported for the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 55 cents. That may not be comparable to a loss of 97 cents expected by analysts.  
Revenue: $2.81 billion vs. $2.50 billion

Moderna posted a net income of $217 million, or 55 cents per share, for the fourth quarter. That compares with a net income of $1.47 billion, or $3.61 per share, reported during the year-ago period.
The biotech company booked fourth-quarter sales of $2.81 billion, with sales of its Covid shot dropping 43% from the same period a year ago. That decline was primarily driven by lower vaccine volumes, but was partially offset by a higher average selling price of the jab, according to Moderna.
Notably, the company said it recorded $600 million in deferred revenue during the quarter related to the company’s work with Gavi, a nongovernmental global vaccine organization that coordinated a global shot distribution program. 
But Moderna CFO Jamey Mock told CNBC in an interview that the deferred revenue is “kind of a nonevent” and isn’t “really the best way to beat earnings.” 

He noted that Moderna is more excited about its lower-than-expected cost of sales, which he called one of the main reasons why the company’s earnings came in above what some analysts were expecting. 
Cost of sales came in at $929 million for the fourth quarter and $4.69 billion for the full year. That includes charges related to the company’s efforts to scale back manufacturing of its Covid shot and write-downs of unused doses of the vaccine. 
In November, Moderna said it had expected costs of sales to come in at $5 billion for the year. 
“We started to see some fruits of productivity in the fourth quarter, and so that’s what we’re happy about,” Mock said, adding that the deferred revenue from Gavi is “just pure accounting.”
Still, the deferred revenue boosted Moderna’s full-year Covid vaccine sales to $6.7 billion, an amount the company first unveiled in January. It booked $18 billion in revenue in 2022 and expects sales from the shot to drop even further in 2024. 
The company noted that the vaccine won 48% of the U.S. Covid vaccine market share last year. That’s up from the 37% it captured in 2022. 
Moderna reiterated its full-year 2024 sales guidance of roughly $4 billion. That forecast includes revenue from its vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which could win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval on May 12.
The RSV shot will have a competitive advantage because it’s the only one that comes in a pre-filled syringe, making it easier for pharmacists to administer, CEO Stephane Bancel said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.
“There is so much more to Moderna than Covid, and that’s what we’re excited about,” Bancel said.
The company will continue to reduce expenses in 2024, Mock noted, including a projected $4.5 billion in full-year research and development expenses, down from $4.8 billion in 2023. 
“We’re going to increase our discipline as well,” Mock said. 
Moderna has said it expects to return to sales growth in 2025 and to break even by 2026, with the launch of new products. The company lost $4.7 billion for the full year 2023, compared with a profit of $8.4billion the year prior.
Moderna currently has 45 products in development, nine of which are in late-stage trials. They include Moderna’s combination shot targeting Covid and the flu, which could win approval as early as 2025.
The pipeline also includes Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine, a highly anticipated shot being developed with Merck to target different tumor types in combination with the blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda. 
Moderna will hold an earnings call with investors at 8 a.m. ET. More

Novavax said it will settle a bitter arbitration dispute with Gavi, a nongovernmental global vaccine organization, over a canceled Covid vaccine purchase agreement. 
The total amount Novavax will pay depends on whether Gavi decides to order more Covid shots from the cash-strapped company over the next five years.
Still, the settlement eliminates what some analysts considered one of the biggest uncertainties around the Covid shot maker.

A health worker prepares a dose of the Novavax vaccine as the Dutch Health Service Organization starts with the Novavax vaccination program on March 21, 2022 in The Hague, Netherlands.
Patrick Van Katwijk | Getty Images

Novavax on Thursday said it will settle a bitter arbitration dispute with Gavi, a nongovernmental global vaccine organization, over a canceled Covid vaccine purchase agreement. 
Novavax could pay up to $475 million to the organization, but the total amount may be less if Gavi decides to order more shots from the cash-strapped company over the next five years.

Still, the settlement eliminates what some analysts considered one of the biggest uncertainties around the Covid shot maker, which is cutting costs amid doubts about its ability to remain in business and plummeting demand for Covid products worldwide.
Shares of Novavax fell more than 50% last year and are down 17% in 2024, putting the company’s market value at roughly $470 million. 
In 2022, Novavax terminated a purchase agreement with Geneva-based Gavi. The company cited Gavi’s failure to procure the 350 million vaccine doses it agreed to buy in May 2021 on behalf of the COVAX Facility, a global program that aims to distribute Covid vaccines more equitably in lower-income countries.   
Gavi sought a refund for the $700 million it spent on advance payments for Novavax’s shots. Novavax has said that those payments were non-refundable. 
Under the settlement, Novavax has paid an initial $75 million to Gavi and will make deferred payments of $80 million each year through Dec. 31. 2028. Those annual payments would be due in quarterly installments. 

But Novavax’s payments could be offset by an annual $80 million “vaccine credit” option under the settlement, which Gavi can use to order any of the company’s Gavi-funded shots for low and lower-middle income countries.
For example, if Gavi decides to order $50 million worth of shots from Novavax in 2025, the company would only have to pay the organization $30 million that year. 
Novavax said it is also offering a vaccine credit of up to $225 million that Gavi can use to order additional vaccine doses throughout the five-year settlement window “should there be additional demand.” 
The terms of the settlement could bode well for Novavax’s business. Analysts had previously told CNBC that Novavax could “be in trouble” if the arbitration forced it to pay the full $700 million to Gavi in 2023. 
“Gavi welcomes this agreement, which allows us to maintain focus on our core programmatic goals, including providing access to COVID-19 vaccines for vulnerable people in lower income countries,” Gavi CEO David Marlow said in a release Thursday.  More

Beyond Meat is launching a new iteration of its burger in grocery stores this spring.
The company is betting an even healthier version of its burgers will lure back consumers.
Critics have attacked plant-based meat from Beyond and its rivals as processed and full of chemicals.

Beyond Meat is launching a new version of its plant-based burger in grocery stores this spring, betting that an even healthier version of its burgers will lure back consumers.
The unveiling Wednesday comes at a pivotal time for Beyond as a company. The plant-based meat category, once buzzy, has lost consumers’ interest. Retail sales of meat alternatives have fallen 33.6% compared with a year ago as of Jan. 28, according to Circana data.

Beyond’s retail and restaurant sales have cratered as a result. In the third quarter, its sales had dropped 29% over the past two years. The company’s market value has also dropped, falling to $463 million, down from a high of $14.14 billion four and a half years ago. The stock has fallen 60% over the past year.
The embattled company has always maintained that its meat substitutes are healthier than the real deal. But Beyond touts that the newest iteration of its beef has less sodium and saturated fat than ever before. The reformulation is the biggest upgrade to its recipe since the burger originally launched in 2016, according to Beyond’s CEO Ethan Brown.
“I think the Beyond IV represents a leap forward, versus an incremental step,” Brown told CNBC.

The latest iteration of the Beyond Burger, made with avocado oil and 20% less sodium.
Source: Beyond Meat

The new burger uses avocado oil, cutting its saturated fat by 60% to two grams. Beyond also slashed the sodium in the plant-based meat by 20%. The ingredient list is shorter but features other new additions, such as red lentil and faba bean protein.
“For the last several years, there have been a combination of campaigns and other efforts to try to poison the well, regarding the health benefits of plant-based meat,” Brown said. “In the spirit of iron sharpening iron, we’ve tried to create products that are now fully unassailable from a health perspective.”

Critics have attacked plant-based meat from Beyond and its rivals as processed and full of chemicals. Back in November, Brown said on the company’s conference call that backers of the campaign to malign plant-based meat as unhealthy were likely members of the meat and pharmaceutical industries.
Beyond said that it worked with the Stanford University School of Medicine and registered dietitians, among other experts, to inform the development of the new product.
Beyond is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Feb. 27.
— CNBC’s Kate Rogers contributed reporting for this story.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Boeing is replacing the head of its 737 Max program, less than two months after a panel blew out midflight during an Alaska Airlines flight with a Max 9.
Katie Ringgold will succeed Ed Clark, who is leaving the company, Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing’s commercial airplane unit, told employees.
The Jan. 5 accident aboard the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 is the latest crisis for Boeing that has been trying to find its footing in the years after fatal crashes of its Boeing 737 Max 8, its bestselling plane.

A person walks past an unpainted Boeing 737-8 MAX parked at Renton Municipal Airport adjacent to Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington on January 25, 2024. 
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Boeing is replacing the head of its 737 Max program less than two months after a panel blew out on one of the jet models during an Alaska Airlines flight, prompting a brief federal grounding of the aircraft type and heightened scrutiny of the plane maker’s operations.
The company’s 737 program head, Ed Clark, is leaving the company, Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing’s commercial airplane unit, said in memo to employees. Katie Ringgold will become president and general manager of the program and the company’s Renton, Washington, site, Deal said.

“I am announcing several leadership changes as we continue driving BCA’s enhanced focus on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements. Our customers demand, and deserve, nothing less,” Deal said.
Boeing named Elizabeth Lund to a newly created position of senior vice president of quality for the commercial airplane unit, Deal said in the note. Lund will continue to report to him, it added. The leadership changes are effective immediately.
“Ed departs with my, and our, deepest gratitude for his many significant contributions over nearly 18 years of dedicated service to Boeing,” Deal said.
The Jan. 5 accident aboard the Alaska Airlines flight is the latest crisis for Boeing that has been trying to find its footing after fatal crashes of its Boeing 737 Max 8 in 2018 and 2019 that killed all 346 people on board the flights.
It is also the latest and most serious in a string of quality flaws on Boeing planes that have delayed deliveries to customers. A month after the Alaska Airlines flight, Boeing said misdrilled holes on some Max planes would delay handovers of the aircraft to airlines.

CEOs including those of Alaska and United have publicly expressed frustration with Boeing as they await new planes to capitalize on a boom in post-pandemic travel.
The door plug that blew out of the almost brand-new 737 Max 9 used for Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 has already brought increased scrutiny and restrictions from federal regulators.
The bolts on that panel, which plugs an unused emergency exit, appeared not to be reinstalled before it was handed over to Alaska Airlines last year, a preliminary investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board found.
The Federal Aviation Administration has said it’s stepped up direct inspections of Boeing’s Max production lines and said it would prohibit the manufacturer from increasing output until the agency is satisfied with its quality controls.
As Boeing struggles to fix flaws along its production line, rival Airbus has ramped up both production and deliveries of new planes.
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Ford and the United Auto Workers 862 reached a tentative deal on Wednesday to avert a strike at the automaker’s most profitable plant.
The UAW had threatened that nearly 9,000 workers at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant would strike on Friday if local union demands were not resolved.
Dozens of local contracts across the Big Three automakers remain open.

Ford Super Duty trucks are seen at the Kentucky Truck assembly plant in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 27, 2023.
Joe White | Reuters

Ford and a United Auto Workers local union, UAW Local 62, reached a tentative deal on Wednesday to avert a strike at the automaker’s most profitable plant.
The UAW had threatened that nearly 9,000 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant would strike on Friday if local union demands were not resolved.

The UAW said Tuesday that the deal addresses local issues related to skilled trades, ergonomics and health and safety.
Ford said in a statement that it was “pleased to have reached a tentative agreement.”
The Louisville plant is Ford’s largest in terms of employment and revenue. Workers at the plant produce Ford Super Duty pickups as well as Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigator SUVs.
Dozens of local contracts across the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — remain in negotiations, according to the UAW. Local contracts differ from the national agreements that the UAW ratified in late 2023 and deal with plant-specific issues.
— CNBC’s Michael Wayland contributed to this report.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

FuboTV is suing Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery over their recently announced sports streaming joint venture, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNBC.
The joint venture is slated to roll out this fall, but several questions remain around its specifics and its structure.
FuboTV cited what it calls “extreme suppression of competition in the U.S. sports-focused streaming market.”

Sports streaming platform FuboTV is suing Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery over their recently announced joint venture, citing what the company calls “extreme suppression of competition in the U.S. sports-focused streaming market,” according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNBC.
The joint venture, announced earlier this month, aims to offer viewers a new way to access marquee live sports. It’s slated to roll out this fall, but several questions remain around its pricing and structure.

“These horizontal competitors are colluding to create a JV that will cause substantial harm to competition and consumers,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit also names Disney-owned ESPN and Hulu as defendants.
“Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice,” FuboTV CEO David Gandler said in a statement. “By joining together to exclusively reserve the rights to distribute a specialized live sports package, we believe these corporations are erecting insurmountable barriers that will effectively block any new competitors from entering the market.”
A spokesperson for the joint venture declined to comment.

Rafael Henrique | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Fubo argues that Disney, Fox and Warner Bros., which control a significant portion of live sports content in the U.S., imposed bundling requirements and “significantly above-market licensing fees” on Fubo, inflating prices for consumers.

Now, their new joint venture allows the media companies to undercut those prices and avoid the same restrictions on which channels they have to carry, granting them a competitive edge, the lawsuit alleges.
As recently as last week, the joint venture was raising eyebrows in the traditional pay-TV market, with leaders of major distributors privately voicing concerns that the new skinny bundle would drive up cable TV cancellations, CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported.
Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, said at the time that antitrust challenges were likely. More

Wanted: presidents for America’s top universities. Applicants must possess an unimpeachable academic record. Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned as president of Stanford University in July 2023 after a report found serious problems with the neuroscientist’s research. They must also be able diplomats in America’s culture wars. In December Liz Magill was chastised by lawmakers in a hearing on campus antisemitism, resigning from her role as president of the University of Pennsylvania days later. Claudine Gay, whose tenure as president of Harvard University lasted six months, fell at both hurdles. She was seen as weak on antisemitism by donors and resigned on January 2nd after a plagiarism scandal erupted over her work.Changes at the helm of America’s universities are common. According to the American Council on Education, an industry association, the average tenure of a university president in 2022 was six years, indicating that hundreds of jobs change hands each year. Yet the number of vacancies at America’s most prestigious schools is striking. Yale’s president will also step down this summer after 11 years in the job; so will the chancellors of the publicly funded University of California, Los Angeles, and Berkeley. That leaves six of the top universities in the world searching for a new president. These institutions are responsible for shepherding some of the world’s biggest brains (Nobel prizewinners) and also some of its most impressionable (the coddled offspring of America’s elite). That’s to say nothing of their hospitals, thousands of administrative staff and $160bn of endowments.The search is on. At private universities, the responsibility falls on the board of trustees. Many look similar to those of America’s corporate giants, packed with financial luminaries. A broader committee, including faculty and students, is sometimes tasked with aiding the search. Specialist headhunters are often called. Fierce competition for candidates, who are usually found running big faculties or lesser universities, is not the only reason boards are daunted by the prospect. America’s universities, which are at the centre of toxic debates over free speech and diversity, are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy that has put the presidential office under a microscope, too.The top job has long had its frustrations. Beyond directing donors’ dollars and making a few big hiring decisions, university presidents wield surprisingly little formal power. Unlike the boss of a company they find their most senior employees protected by tenure, which makes it almost impossible to remove experienced faculty members. “The glib answer is that they live in a very large house and beg for money,” says Richard Chait, a professor at Harvard. A 1949 editorial in The American Scholar described the job as an exercise in “advertising, selling and hoarding”; Clark Kerr, a mid-century Berkeley chancellor, quipped that the role involved providing parking for the faculty, sex for the students and athletics for the alumni.Mr Kerr’s summation points to a deeper truth—that a university president’s job is mainly about keeping a motley crew of interested parties happy. Achieving that balance is becoming nearly impossible. Students, who are meant to be instructed by universities, are instead pushing them around. Donors are becoming more vocal, too. Some, displeased with how Ms Gay and Ms Magill handled antisemitism on campus, were instrumental in ousting them. Ken Griffin, a hedge-fund titan whose name adorns Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, recently said he had halted his financial contributions to the university. A 2003 paper by Edward Glaeser, an economist, suggests that as non-profit institutions become wealthier, power shifts from their providers of capital (donors) to their workers (faculty). Although that may have been a reasonable description of the decline of donors’ power during the 20th century, the financial backers of America’s universities are now reasserting their influence with a vengeance. Few think this pressure will subside any time soon.One option is to rethink the duties of the president. That could involve limiting their ability to make political statements, or reinforcing their obligation to merit and free speech. Boards are, however, more likely to approach the problem through their presidential appointments than constitutional change. And despite the challenges of the job, they will not encounter a dearth of applicants for these distinguished posts. A candidate’s ability to placate donors or appear on the congressional stage will be closely scrutinised. That they will undertake more thorough due diligence of prospects’ academic records is assured. But might boards look outside universities altogether?Some may consider a businessman an attractive choice, particularly to deal with the administrative bloat that now afflicts many universities. After all, the operating budgets of America’s largest universities are now similar to those of a Fortune 500 company. Yet America’s businesses have not shown themselves to be any better at navigating the country’s toxic culture wars. A former politician, another possibility, may know how to gladhand donors and schmooze with journalists, but would be a lightning rod for criticism from supporters of whichever party they did not represent. In both cases, the outsider would struggle to win the respect of the faculty through whom they must work.Searching for a purposeThe truth is that the background of applicants is not the problem. An identity crisis is engulfing America’s universities. They are torn between their responsibilities to learning and social justice—and that is a tension any president will find hard to resolve. This carries wider lessons for all organisations. Institutions unmoored from a clear purpose, whether that is knowledge-seeking or profit-seeking, are destined for periodic crises. Even the cleverest captain would struggle to steer such a ship. ■ More

Intuitive Machines’ stock jumped, surpassing the price shares debuted at after completing its SPAC merger in February 2023.
The company’s first moon mission, called IM-1, “continues to be in excellent health,” the company said over the holiday weekend, with the lander named “Odysseus” preparing to enter the moon’s orbit on Wednesday.
Intuitive Machines is on track to make its moon landing attempt at 5:49 p.m. ET on Thursday.

The company’s IM-1 mission lander shortly after launching on Feb. 15, 2024.
Intuitive Machines

Shares of Intuitive Machines jumped for a third consecutive trading session, surpassing their post-SPAC debut price, as the company’s first mission completed further milestones as it approached the moon.
Intuitive Machines’ stock surged as much as 65% in trading Tuesday to an intraday high of $12.05, north of the $10.03 a share price that shares traded at after the company completed its SPAC merger in February 2023.

The stock closed the day up 50% at $10.99 per share.
As recently as last month, the stock was trading near $2 a share. Since its inaugural moon mission launched last week, the company’s share price has more than doubled.
The mission, known as IM-1, launched on a SpaceX rocket and has since completed several of the 16 milestones that Intuitive Machines identified as key to the mission’s success. One of the key milestones came when the lander, named “Odysseus,” successfully fired its engine for the first time. The lander has used the engine to adjust its trajectory and remain on target.

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In a series of daily updates since Friday, the Texas-based lunar company said its cargo lander “continues to be in excellent health” and is preparing to enter the moon’s orbit on Wednesday. The company noted that entering lunar orbit, also known as “lunar orbit insertion,” will be the mission’s “largest challenge to date.”
The company is on track to make its moon landing attempt at 5:49 p.m. ET on Thursday, it said.

Intuitive Machines and NASA leaders showcase a mockup of the company’s Nova-C lunar lander during a presentation on May 31, 2019.
Aubrey Gemignani / NASA

The IM-1 lander is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads, six of which are for NASA under a $118 million contract.
Intuitive Machines’ mission represents the second under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which aims to use low-cost private spacecraft to deliver science projects and cargo to the moon with increasing regularity in support of the agency’s Artemis crew program.
Governments and private companies alike have made more than 50 attempts to land on the moon with mixed success since the first attempts in the early 1960s, and the track record has remained shaky even in the modern era. 
Last month, U.S. company Astrobotic got its first moon mission off the ground but encountered problems shortly after launch. The flight was cut short and failed to make a lunar landing attempt.

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