Track the spend through the cycle. In its annual report for fiscal 2024, filed February 21, 2025, Moderna reported research and development expense of about $4.54 billion, down modestly from roughly $4.85 billion in 2023. Both figures sit far above anything the company spent before its revenue surge — R&D was on the order of $1.4 billion in 2020.
The trajectory tells you what management is doing with the windfall years: plowing them into the pipeline. A research budget that scaled into the multibillions and is only now easing slightly reflects a deliberate bet that the next generation of programs justifies sustained, heavy investment even as the post-peak revenue picture shifts.
The fundamentals-first read is that R&D at this level is both the company’s hope and its pressure point. It is the spend that could create a more diversified Moderna; it is also a large fixed-ish cost that has to be carried while the products meant to justify it are still in development. The 10-K records the investment, not the payoff.
Read forward from early 2025, the open question is return on a research budget that has stayed large through a revenue transition. The filing shows a company still spending like one that expects its pipeline to matter — whether that conviction is vindicated is a future beyond this document.
Every figure above is drawn from the company's primary SEC filing — surfaced through EdgarBeast, the SEC filing data API and evidence index — and verifiable against the filing on sec.gov.