Shares of Moderna Inc. extended their slide Monday toward a fourth straight loss, a streak whose start coincided with a sale of shares by company co-founder and chair Noubar Afeyan.
The stock
MRNA,
-6.47%
dropped 6.2% in afternoon trading, enough to lead the S&P 500 index’s
SPX
losers on the day and to put it on track for the lowest close since Nov. 18, 2020.
The selloff comes even after the company affirmed its guidance, provided in August, that 2023 COVID-vaccine sales would be in the range of $6 billion to $8 billion. That affirmation came in the wake of Pfizer Inc.’s
PFE,
+3.61%
warning of a revenue shortfall due to its lowered outlook for COVID product sales.
The stock has tumbled 11.7% amid a four-session losing streak. Moderna disclosed late Friday that on Oct. 11, when the losing streak started, Afeyan sold 15,000 shares at a weighted average price of $103.296 to raise $1.55 million.
Afeyan said in a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the sales were part of a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan that was adopted in February 2023. After the sale of shares on Oct. 11, Afeyan still owned 2.17 million shares, or about 0.6% of the shares outstanding.
Filings show he also sold 15,000 shares on Oct. 4 at a weighted average price of $102.723, to bring his total October sales to $3.09 million worth of shares.
In September, Afeyan sold a total of 55,000 shares at a weighted average price of $105.825 to raise a total of about $5.82 billion.
Moderna’s stock has plunged 48.7% year to date, while shares of fellow COVID-vaccine maker Pfizer have tumbled 35.6% and the S&P 500 has gained 14%.
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