This week in charts: Moderna’s massive stock run

This is the latest installment in a new series where BioPharma Dive uses data visualization to recap what’s going on across the industry. Today, we’re looking at Moderna’s stock performance in 2026 and an acceleration in China deals from Roche.

It wasn’t long ago that Moderna, which became one of the biotechnology industry’s most valuable companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, was sputtering.

Plummeting demand for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine caused the company to revise financial projections multiple times, frustrating investors and analysts. Additional projects fell short in testing, were delayed or didn’t become the kind of sellers Moderna had hoped. Layoffs and a strategic shift ensued, all while Moderna saw its flagship messenger RNA vaccine technology become the target of political attacks. 

Company shares bottomed out at around $22 apiece last year, little more than their debut price in 2018.

Since then, though, Moderna has fashioned a turnaround so stark that it’s caught up to, and blown by, most of its peers. The Phase 3 success in August of intismeran autogene, a melanoma vaccine it’s co-developing with Merck & Co., was heralded by analysts as a “landmark moment” and “major win” that could unlock billions of dollars in future sales. Moderna’s stock price, which had been steadily climbing throughout 2026, skyrocketed immediately and has continued ascending ever since — even during a recent sector-wide pullback.

Altogether, Moderna shares have climbed by more than 600% this year, inching closer to the company’s pandemic heights and vastly outpacing the 23% gains for the biotech index fund known as the XBI. 

The run is the “clearest example of how aggressively investors will reward meaningful clinical de-risking,” analysts at the firm Raymond James wrote in a September note. 

Whether the upswing will continue could come down to the perception of an eagerly anticipated presentation of the intismeran results at a medical meeting later this month. Those study details are “likely the biggest event” for Moderna, as well as Merck, “for the rest of this year,” wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh. 

Over the last few years, licensing pacts between Western pharmaceutical companies and their China-based counterparts have taken the industry by storm. More than 60 deals were struck in 2025, and the number could increase in 2026, according to BioPharma Dive data. 

Up until recently, those deals had been spread relatively evenly across Western companies. Suddenly, though, Roche is leading the charge.  

Starting in late August, Roche successively formed five different deals with Chinese drug developers. These alliances are built around an array of different medicines, from would-be obesity therapies to “molecular glue” drugs that have become increasingly popular. 

The spike in activity has placed Roche well ahead of other larga pharmas. Data show GSK and AstraZeneca are next in line among the most active partners for China-based drugmakers over the last 20-plus months. Both have done five deals during that timeframe.