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—VC fund 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. 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.
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.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
