Is Moderna (MRNA) a High Growth Stock?
Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Health Care Fund” fourth quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, the fund increased by 9.08% (Institutional Shares) compared to an 11.54% gain for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index and a 7.56% gain for the S&P 500 Index. The fund fell 16.90% in 2022, compared to a 6.10% decline for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index and an 18.11% decline for the S&P 500 Index. Factors like cash exposure in the up-market, adverse stock selection, and differences in sub-industry exposures led the fund to underperform in the quarter relative to its benchmark. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2022.
Baron Funds highlighted stocks like Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) in the Q4 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) is a biotechnology company. On January 30, 2023, Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock closed at $180.87 per share. One-month return of Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) was 0.70%, and its shares gained 6.82% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) has a market capitalization of $69.487 billion.
Baron Funds made the following comment about Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:
“We added to our position in Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), a market leader in medicines made of messenger RNA (mRNA). We think Moderna has a competitively advantaged platform that allows the company to develop medicines and manufacture them at scale more rapidly than other classes of medicines. We believe that as COVID transitions to an endemic phase, annual COVID booster volumes could approximate flu vaccine volumes over time. The worldwide annual flu vaccine market consists of 500 million to 600 million vaccine doses. Assuming COVID boosters are combined with flu and RSV vaccines in one shot, and depending upon assumptions for vaccine pricing and market share, we think the annual recurring revenue opportunity for respiratory vaccines is at least $5 billion to $10 billion. Beyond this base business, Moderna has a large pipeline of development programs, including vaccines against latent viruses (such as CMV, EBV, and HIV), and medicines for cancer and rare diseases. Just recently, Moderna announced that its personalized cancer vaccine in combination with Merck’s Keytruda demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful reduction in the risk of disease recurrency or death compared to Keytruda monotherapy in stage III/IV melanoma patients with high risk of recurrence following complete resection. These results are the first demonstration of efficacy for an investigational mRNA cancer treatment in a randomized clinical trial. Additionally, Moderna has roughly $18 billion of cash on its balance sheet as of December 31, 2022.”
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Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 44 hedge fund portfolios held Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) at the end of the third quarter, which was 45 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) in another article and shared the list of most undervalued quality stocks to buy according to hedge funds. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2022 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
