(Cheng Xin/Getty Images)

Bad Medicine

Moderna misses in Q4, stock does what it’s done for nearly 8 months straight: goes down

Moderna’s main revenue driver, the COVID-19 vaccine, is bringing in a fraction of what it used to.

2/14/25 7:45AM

Moderna shares slipped in early trading after the vaccine maker missed Wall Street estimates.

Moderna reported a $2.91 loss per share, compared to the $2.68 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. It reported about $1 billion in sales, above the $943 million analysts expected. Its profits were impacted by an unexpected $238 million charge for a canceled manufacturing contract during the quarter.

Moderna and Pfizer were given government contracts to quickly produce a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. But Moderna’s portfolio is less diverse than Pfizer’s, and the COVID-19 vaccine remains its top revenue driver even as demand dwindles.

Moderna said last month that it expects to post between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion of revenue in 2025, compared with the nearly $3 billion analysts expected prior to the guidance.

Moderna’s stock got a bump in January after Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said at a White House presser that artificial intelligence has the potential to make personalized vaccines to detect and prevent cancer. Though not named, the drugmaker happens to be working on exactly that kind of technology.

Growing concern over bird flu has also given investors optimism for Moderna. Last month (prior to President Trump taking office), Moderna was awarded $590 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to help develop a vaccine to protect humans from bird flu. On Thursday, Trump’s pick to run HHS, vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was confirmed to run the agency.

Hyunsoo Rim1m

Riot Platforms rises on activist push to accelerate AI data center pivot

Shares of major crypto miner Riot Platforms jumped as much as 5.6% in pre-market trading Wednesday after activist investor Starboard Value urged the company, in a letter seen by Bloomberg, to accelerate its shift from bitcoin mining toward AI-focused data center operations.

Starboard Urges Bitcoin Miner Riot to Speed Up Shift to Data Centers

Luke Kawa12h

Applied Digital, WeRide, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals dip as Nvidia exits positions

Three stocks took a dip in after-hours trading on Tuesday after Nvidia’s 13F filing showed the chip designer sold its stake over the final three months of 2025 in:

Applied Digital, a data center operator in which Nvidia was the seventh-largest holder as of the end of Q3.
- That being said, Nvidia still has some quasi-direct Applied Digital exposure through its still substantial CoreWeave position. The neocloud acquired warrants in APLD last June.
WeRide, the Chinese self-driving firm.
Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which engages in AI-driven drug development.

Nvidia also sold its stake in Arm Holdings, but that was offset by some good news: part of Nvidia’s expanded pact with Meta will see Arm-based CPUs assume a more prominent role in data center environments, which may help boost its volumes and selling prices.

Nvidia added positions in Nokia, Intel, and Synopsys in Q4, all of which had been previously announced via press releases. Its CoreWeave and Nebius positions were unchanged relative to Q3.

Luke Kawa

12h

Nvidia enhances partnership with social media giant Meta to deploy “millions” of its GPUs

Winners: Nvidia, Arm. Losers: AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Arista.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang interviews Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the 2024 SIGGRAPH conference in Denver, CO on July 29, 2024.

Luke Kawa16h

Sandisk drops after Western Digital confirms plan to unload $3 billion in stock at a discount

Western Digital is cashing in more of its Sandisk position.

The hard drive seller is exchanging more than $3 billion in Sandisk shares as part of a debt-for-equity swap.

This secondary offering was priced at $545 per share, a discount of roughly 8% to where Sandisk closed on Tuesday.

Shares of Sandisk are down nearly 3% in premarket trading as of 5:50 a.m. ET, while Western Digital is up more than 2%.

The two companies were once one, but Western Digital spun off a little more than 80% of its flash drive business (which would become Sandisk) in February 2025, and already exchanged the lion’s share of what remained in a separate debt-for-equity swap in June.

This move was very, very well telegraphed by Western Digital, which recently confirmed plans to monetize its Sandisk position before the one-year anniversary of that split (February 21). And Sandisk’s press release makes clear that the company is not the one selling more stock or making any money off of this.

That being said, being a high-flying stock that has a Bloomberg headline with “secondary offering” in it could, in theory, spark some turbulence. Particularly when that happens at a discount.

After this transaction, Western Digital will own a little less than 1.7 million shares of Sandisk, and plans to dispose of the rest through either exchanging these shares for its own (effectively, a buyback) or giving them to its shareholders.

Western Digital announces additional $4 billion in share buybacks, with management poised to unload its remaining stake in Sandisk

This secondary offering was priced at $545 per share, a discount of roughly 8% to where Sandisk closed on Tuesday.

Shares of Sandisk are down nearly 3% in premarket trading as of 5:50 a.m. ET, while Western Digital is up more than 2%.

That being said, being a high-flying stock that has a Bloomberg headline with “secondary offering” in it could, in theory, spark some turbulence. Particularly when that happens at a discount.

Luke Kawa16h

Cadence Design Systems jumps after Q4 earnings, 2026 profit outlook, and sales backlog exceed estimates

Cadence Design Systems jumped in after-hours trading on Tuesday and built on that advance on Wednesday morning after posting better-than-expected Q4 earnings, a big pipeline of future business, and a solid profit outlook for 2026.

For Q4, the electronic design automation company reported:

Sales of $1.44 billion (estimate: $1.42 billion).
Adjusted earnings per share of $1.99 (estimate: $1.91).
Remaining performance obligations (RPO) of $7.8 billion (estimate: $7.25 billion).

Management said that 2026 adjusted earnings per share would range between $8.05 and $8.15, above the consensus call for $8.03.

“Historically, Cadence tends to start the year with conservative guidance and subsequently raises forecasts as the year progresses,” writes JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur.

In recent weeks, investors have worried that Cadence’s software business, which is used by chip designers, could suffer competitive pressure from AI tools. At the very least, that RPO figure says there’s billions of dollars standing between Cadence and any more disrupted future.

“Highlight of the quarter, in our view, is the expansion of collaboration with multiple hyperscalers and one hyperscaler taping out the first chip under COT [customer owned tooling], which we believe is the next big story for EDA as AI infrastructure buildout continues,” writes Needham analyst Charles Shi.