Tucker Carlson recently indicated that the Pharma industry had a pretty big footprint on media advertising, for instance representing a full 70% of the ad revenue in 2020.
I found that a little hard to believe so I went to Statistica figuring his estimate was way off. Shockingly it's exactly correct? WTF!
Additionally, pharma and public employee unions also give the largest amounts of contribution to political campaigns.
Does this necessarily mean that folks like Pfizer were trying to manipulate the media and public officials to pitch their RNA vaccines during the pandemic? That's pure conjecture.
Ironically the stocks of both Pfizer and Moderna having gone nuts during the pandemic have fallen back down to earth. Did the Chairman of Moderna sell a massive amount of his stock before its price fell back down to earth? The VC firm of Moderna's Chairman sold $1.4 billion worth of it.
Does this prove anything? Not really. Do I harbor any skeptism? Absolutely not. I believe these guys are trying to help humanity and anyone who suggests otherwise is un-American.
VC Firm Of Moderna Chairman Sold $1.4 Billion Of Stock In Two Months
Giacomo Tognini, Forbes
Apr 22, 2021
Flagship Pioneering, a VC fund run and majority owned by Moderna chairman and cofounder Noubar Afeyan, sold $1.4 billion of shares in late February and late March.
Shares in companies producing vaccines, antibodies and other tools to combat the Covid-19 pandemic have skyrocketed since March 2020. The unprecedented boom in healthcare stocks helped mint at least 40 new billionaires with ties to companies fighting Covid-19. At the same time, one high-profile investor in Cambridge, Massachusetts-based vaccine maker Moderna—life sciences VC outfit Flagship Pioneering, led by Moderna cofounder and chairman Noubar Afeyan—cashed in on the firm’s soaring stock price, selling more than $1.5 billion in shares since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Executives at Moderna and other pharma companies that developed vaccines for Covid-19, including Pfizer and Novavax, sold a further $400 million in shares over the same time period, for a total of $1.9 billion.
Afeyan, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $2.3 billion, owns a large stake in Moderna largely through his majority ownership of Flagship, which he established in 2000 as a firm to build and fund promising startups in life sciences and technology. Two Flagship funds—Flagship Ventures Fund IV, L.P. and Flagship Ventures Fund IV-Rx, L.P.—sold 53% of their Moderna holdings, about 10.3 million shares, for more than $1.4 billion (pretax) in three sets of sales in late February and late March this year. Before that, the funds also sold 1 million shares for $68.2 million (pretax) in May 2020. According to SEC filings, Afeyan owns at least 75% of Flagship, and the firm directly owns 4% of Flagship Ventures Fund IV but doesn’t own any of Flagship Ventures Fund IV-Rx.
“Our sales over recent weeks and months were pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan put in place last December and executed in two installments following the passage of 60 days from the original filing,” a spokesperson for Flagship told Forbes. “As per our form 4 filing, this program covered 10 million shares, and is now concluded. At the time Moderna spun out from Flagship ten years ago, Flagship held roughly 60 million shares, and since 2019 it has periodically made distributions of roughly half that sum to its investors.” Flagship funds retain 20 million shares in Moderna after the transactions.
While Moderna’s chairman may be behind the biggest sales, the pharmaceutical executive who personally sold the most shares is Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel. He sold about 1.7 million shares—7% of his stake—for a combined $161.2 million (pretax) since March 2020, taking advantage of the stock’s blistering rise since the onset of the pandemic. He still owns a 6% stake in the company, part of an estimated $5.5 billion net worth that includes about $1.5 billion in Moderna options. Moderna shares closed at $23.61 on March 11, 2020; they hit a high of $185.98 on February 8, 2021 and closed at $169.50 on April 21, 2021, more than 600% higher than its pre-pandemic levels.
The next biggest seller is Bancel’s colleague and Moderna’s chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, who made $108.2 million (pretax) in sales of Moderna shares. Moderna’s fifth-largest individual shareholder, president Stephen Hoge, sold $65.5 million worth of Moderna stock since March 2020; Hoge’s 0.4% stake in Moderna is worth roughly $300 million, but he also owns about $545 million in options. Rounding out the group of Moderna sellers is Juan Andres, the firm’s chief technical operations and quality officer, who sold shares worth $27.2 million. Collectively, Moderna executives and Flagship funds have sold nearly $1.9 billion (pretax) of the company’s fast-rising stock since March 2020.
Not every Moderna billionaire has been reducing their position, though: Founding investor Timothy Springer and cofounder Robert Langer, both professors at Harvard and MIT, respectively, also became billionaires thanks to their Moderna holdings but neither has sold a share since the company was founded in 2010. Forbes estimates Springer has a net worth of $2.6 billion while Langer’s is $2.1 billion. Another pandemic-era billionaire, Uğur Şahin of German biotech outfit BioNTech, has also never sold a share in the company he cofounded in 2008 with his wife (and the firm’s chief medical officer) Özlem Türeci. BioNTech stock is up more than 400% since March 11, 2020 and Forbes estimates Şahin’s net worth to be $6.4 billion.
Other pharma executives have been selling shares as well, but not to the extent of those at Moderna. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla sold about 60% of his stake in the company under a preset sale plan in November for about $5.6 million (pretax). Stanley Erck, the CEO of Novavax—which is aiming to secure FDA emergency authorization of its Covid-19 vaccine in the second quarter of 2021—sold about $9.3 million (pretax) of Novavax shares in late September and early November. Another Novavax executive, president of research and development Glenn Gregory, sold nearly $20 million (pretax) in shares since March 2020.
Editor’s note, April 22, 2021: This story was updated with comment from Flagship Pioneering.
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