Moderna's CFO on How to Allocate Capital in Big Pharma

Jamey Mock (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios.

Tracy Alloway (0:04)

Podcasts, radio, news.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

Joe, do you know much about Moderna?

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Well, I had heard the name for maybe a few years, and then they became household names at a point in 2020 when they were ahead of the race to develop a COVID vaccine. Then it became massive, and then I don't know much beyond that.

Tracy Alloway (0:41)

Yeah, for me, this is a company that kind of came out of nowhere during the pandemic. And as you're right, it kind of shot into household name territory. Here's my other question.

Do you know what a CFO does?

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

Well, that is a great question, actually, because, I mean, I guess I would say yes in the sense that I think they're the ones who are sort of watching the financing, helping to make capital allocation decisions, although I imagine that the CEO also has that. I think the CFO is the one primarily involved in putting together the earnings and communicating the finance side, specifically the analysts, but I guess I only partly know what a CFO does.

Tracy Alloway (1:26)

To me, the thing I always think when I hear CFO, I always think they're the hard ones, sorry, they're the ones that answer the hard questions on the earnings calls. That's what they do.

Joe Weisenthal (1:38)

I love that.

I think that, yes, that's right. The CEO is like, oh, we get these great products and blah, blah. And then someone asks a really technical question about, well, if you're borrowing this above sofa and margins, and they're like, I'm gonna bring the CFO in to answer this one.

Tracy Alloway (1:52)

Yeah, exactly. Well, I am pleased to say today, we do in fact have the perfect guest to answer the question of what is Moderna and also what does a CFO actually do. We are going to be speaking to the CFO of Moderna, Jamey Mock. Jamey, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Jamey Mock (2:09)

Hi, Tracy and Joe. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Tracy Alloway (2:13)

So maybe just to begin, can you give us the sort of elevator pitch summary of what it is that Moderna does? And full disclosure, I was in Hong Kong for a few years of the pandemic, so I missed a lot of the vaccine conversation here in the US. There was a very different vaccine conversation that was happening in Hong Kong and in mainland China at the time.

But what is it that you actually do? And how is it that you have become a household name in a relatively few short years?

Jamey Mock (2:44)

Well, sure. So first, I found your introduction quite entertaining.

The CFO, actually in our business, because we are very much a science business, which I'll get into, it's actually our president and CEO that get the really tough questions, but I get a few of my own share as well, which we can get into.

Joe Weisenthal (3:02)

The CEO has to answer the tough biology questions. Well, he's quite good at it.

Jamey Mock (3:09)

He was part employee number one and has been here and built this business for 13 years. So, and he's got a science background, so he's quite good at it. And then our president, Steven Hogue, is a doctor by trade. So obviously they answer most of the scientific questions. But so Moderna is obviously known due to how we help the global community with COVID, but it's really much more than that. It is a platform company revolving around mRNA, which really makes the proteins in a body. And those proteins can help either fight infectious diseases and prevent against any kind of infectious disease or be a therapy. And we can get into the segments that we're in, but it can be an oncology, it can be in rare disease. And we actually believed, and that was the principle belief in the company is, if this platform can work, it's gonna be able, since it's part of your natural body, it's going to be able to help solve many different therapeutic areas in the body.

And so that's a little bit about Moderna. And over the last 13 years, we've built a pipeline of 45 drug candidates.

Obviously we're known for COVID, but also in other respiratory diseases. We hope to launch our second drug this year, RSV, which became pretty well known last year as it had a pretty significant spike, but also in flu and other respiratory diseases. And then in oncology, we've got an exciting cancer therapy that we are excited about, rare diseases and other latent diseases. So that's a little bit about Moderna. We've been around since 2011