With shares of Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) up around 330% year to date, investors have to be asking themselves, "Is Moderna still worth holding?"
The jump in value, from a market cap of $6.6 billion at the beginning of this year to $23.4 billion, is due to the potential for mRNA-1273, Moderna's vaccine to prevent COVID-19. The company has only released a little data from the phase 1 clinical trial, but the phase 2 study is already underway, and the biotech plans to start a phase 3 clinical trial next month.
As the maker of the most advanced U.S.-based vaccine, Moderna certainly deserves a premium over other early stage biotechs developing COVID-19 vaccines, such as Inovio (NASDAQ: INO) and Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX). But it's debatable whether the potential for mRNA-1273 is worthy of a $16.8 billion increase in Moderna's valuation when Inovio's entire market cap including its pipeline is only $3.3 billion, and Novavax, which has an influenza vaccine that's reported positive phase 3 results, is only worth $4.1 billion.
Source Fool.com