$MRNA CEO, Stephen Bancel, recently deleted his Twitter account. Over the past 2 years he has sold over $400 million on stock. We will look at MRNAs price over the last 5 years, insider selling over this time period, and what a deleted Twitter account might indicate.

MRNA Price Performance

Comparing the current price relative to MRNA’s 52 week high of $497.49, we see that MRNA is currently trading 67.6 % lower than the 52 week high price.

In mid 2019, MRNA was trading around $20 per share. In the middle of 2021 it reached an all time high of almost $500 per share. This is a 25x increase in share price, which is significant. This is important to note because until the pandemic hit, Stephen had not sold any of his shares.

MRNA CEO – Stephen Bancel

Here is a quick snippet of Stephen’s corporate profile. He has been with Moderna for over 10 years.

Stéphane Bancel has served as Moderna’s Chief Executive Officer since October 2011 and as a member of Moderna’s board of directors since March 2011. Before joining the Company, Mr. Bancel served for five years as Chief Executive Officer of the French diagnostics company bioMérieux SA. From July 2000 to March 2006, he served in various roles at Eli Lilly and Company, including as Managing Director, Belgium and as Executive Director, Global Manufacturing Strategy and Supply Chain. Prior to Lilly, Mr. Bancel served as Asia-Pacific Sales and Marketing Director for bioMérieux.

MRNA CEO – Insider Trading History

Over the last 5 years Stephen has not purchased any shares of Moderna. Typically, we see CEOs and members of the executive leadership team purchase shares of their own company if they believe it is a strong investment.

The chart below shows that in the last 2 year, Stephen sold shares on almost a weekly basis.

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If we look at the 5-year chart and performance of MRNA we see that the pandemic has been very profitable for Moderna.

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Source: Utradea MRNA Stock

One of the greatest investors of all time, Peter Lynch, was noted as saying that “insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.”

I think this quote is pretty telling. The executive team doesn’t thin MRNA will reach these highs again, since a majority of their revenue came from COVID-19 vaccines.

MRNA CEO Deletes Twitter Account

On February 8, 2022 Stephen deleted his Twitter account. Here is a link to his deleted account

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There are several reasons why someone would delete their account. We’ve seen in the past people get called put for incorrect or inappropriate tweets. This could be one of the reasons. I think the other main reasons is that Tweets can be used in a court of law, and if Stephen is facing upcoming litigation he might have been instructed by his legal counsel to delete his account and historical tweets.

MRNA Upcoming Litigation?

This interesting tweet was shared on February 4, 2022

Former Blackrock fund manager Edward Dowd, grew his fund to $14B by anticipating the next big news, believes Big Insurance will be the catalyst that causes the wheels to come off. Major life insurance firms are reporting multi-sigma increases in non-Covid-related death claims. Link to original tweet and video

Headline from Jan 7, 2022

Moderna CEO warns people may need fourth Covid shot as efficacy of boosters likely to decline over time (source)

• Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the efficacy of boosters against Covid-19 will likely decline over time, and some people may need a fourth shot by the fall.
• “I would expect that it’s not going to hold great,” Bancel said, during a Goldman Sachs interview, referring to the strength of the single booster shots.
• A random mutation could change the course of the pandemic again, Bancel warned.

Why Delete Your Twitter Account and Sell Shares?

I think it’s self evident. There are two main reasons why Stephen deleted his twitter account and has been selling his shares over the past year.

1. He knows Moderna valuation will never be as high as it was during the peak of the pandemic. It was an opportune time to capitalize on the all-time high share price.
2. His deleted account is likely in response to the effectiveness of the clinical trials for Moderna and new vaccines entering the market.

We won’t know for sure why he deleted his account, and a lot of it is speculation. The selling of shares over the last 2 years makes sense, and we’ve seen several other CEOs and executives sell their shares when their share prices hit all-time highs. I think we will start to new additional news and reports about Moderna over the coming weeks which will provide a more concrete reason to why Stephen deleted his Twitter account.