Moderna up almost 4%, looking to continue outperformance streak

U.S. drugmaker Moderna MRNA.O shares up more than 4% on Monday with no obvious fresh catalyst, still it was outperforming the S&P 500 healthcare index .SPXHC by 0.4% on the day after four straight weeks of faster gains than the sector

Monday's gain for the company, which makes vaccines, follows its advance last week of 14.7%, which included a 9.2% gain on Friday.

On Friday Jefferies analyst Andrew Tsai, who rates the stock 'hold', wrote that similar to prior years he expects MRNA to offer a business update in Jan with a Q4 update but he foresaw 'no real surprises' saying long term "upside is predicated on having visibility to mgmt's 2028 cash breakeven guidance"

On Thursday last week Moderna said early in the day that it would get up to $54.3 million in funding from a global coalition to support late-stage development of its experimental bird flu vaccine

In all, MRNA has risen more than 55% since Nov 20 when it said that it had secured a five-year term loan facility for up to $1.5 bln from Ares Management Credit Funds and that it was targeting up to 10% revenue growth next year

However, despite recent gains the stock is still down ~15% YTD after reaching its peak for the year so far in late May as investors have been concerned about a shake-up of U.S. support for bird flu vaccines

Also last week The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has no plans to put a "black box" warning on COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Bloomberg News report top FDA official Marty Makary

Stock last traded at $35.25 vs YTD peak of $48.92 and Wall Street's median PT of $28, as per LSEG, which shows 25 analyst ratings: 4 'buy,' 17 'hold' 3 'sell' and 1 'strong sell'