Moderna Inc. (MRNA) shares took a breather on Thursday, sliding nearly 20% after a massive rally the day before. The surge came after the company and partner Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) reported promising data from a late-stage trial of their individualized cancer therapy, intismeran, in advanced skin cancer.
At a pre-planned interim analysis, the investigational combination of intismeran and Keytruda showed statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival compared to Keytruda alone. That's a big deal, and investors responded by sending Moderna's stock up around 170% on Wednesday.
Now, analysts are weighing in on what this means for the company's future. On Wednesday, William Blair upgraded Moderna from Market Perform to Outperform. Analyst Myles Minter adjusted his financial model to reflect a higher probability of success for intismeran's approval in adjuvant melanoma, raising it from 65% to 90%.
Minter also extended his sales projections for intismeran in melanoma out to 2040, expecting sales to exceed $5.4 billion for Moderna based on a 50/50 profit share with Merck. He assumes a wholesale acquisition cost of $475,000, which aligns with pricing for currently approved cell therapies in oncology.
But the opportunity goes beyond melanoma. William Blair added revenue for intismeran in other indications currently in pivotal studies, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). For NSCLC, Minter forecasts sales for Moderna of about $10 billion in 2040, given the large total addressable market. He sees about $3.3 billion from RCC after Merck's profit share.
"Fundamentally the company now has a multibillion-dollar peak sales opportunity in adjuvant melanoma to drive top-line growth and further data in several oncology settings could solidify Moderna's foothold here," Minter wrote in an investor note on Thursday.
William Blair views the data as largely de-risking intismeran's utility in combination with pembrolizumab, with a safety profile that keeps the bar for clinical uptake low. However, the analyst notes that investor debate will now shift to how much the INTerpath-001 data have de-risked intismeran in other cancer settings, and whether this product can be as broad as Keytruda, which generated around $31.7 billion in 2025 revenue for Merck.
Moderna shares were down 19.89% to $139.69 at the time of publication on Thursday.
