Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel’s total compensation remained remarkably stable last year at $19.9 million, even as the vaccines company navigated a “challenging regulatory and business environment.”
While Moderna’s total revenue dropped 40% in 2025, missing the company’s expectations, Bancel’s overall pay was roughly flat, increasing 0.2% year over year, according to a proxy filing (PDF) issued Monday.
Bancel’s pay package was bolstered by a $4.3 million cash bonus, a nearly 120% increase from its 2024 level and the highest figure in that category since Moderna became a public company in 2018. The second-largest nonequity incentive he earned was $2.7 million in 2022, the year Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax, obtained its full FDA approval. The jump this time came partially as a result of the chief executive’s major cost-cutting program launched last year.
The significant boost to Bancel’s cash bonus more than offset a $1.5 million decrease in his stock and option awards, which remain at risk as their value is subject to market volatility.
To justify Bancel’s bonus, Moderna’s board cited “exceptional performance against the company’s corporate objectives,” resulting in a 170% payout of target.
In assessing Moderna’s performance last year, the board gave Bancel much credit for his cost-cutting initiatives, leading to maximum payouts on two cost-efficiency metrics.
The firm outperformed expectations “through sustained, enterprise-wide operational discipline, including portfolio prioritization, productivity improvements, manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies, disciplined capital deployment, and the expanded use of technology and automation,” Moderna’s board wrote in its executive compensation report.
Other items on Bancel’s bonus scorecard, including regulatory filings and approvals, plus late-stage and early-stage development achievements, were all at or above target levels—but not total revenue.
While the board had targeted between $2.3 billion and $2.4 billion in sales from Spikevax and respiratory syncytial virus shot mRESVIA, the actual revenue landed at $1.9 billion due to a “challenging commercial setting,” the company said. The board therefore determined a payout of 13% against a goal weight of 20%.
As the COVID and RSV vaccine markets shrank and commercial competition intensified, Moderna, early last year, laid out a plan to reduce its annual spending by $1.5 billion by the end of 2026. The company updated its goal in May of last year, targeting a reduction in operating costs of $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion between 2025 and 2027.
Layoffs and pipeline culls followed. Moderna’s headcount fell to 4,700 as of the end of 2025—down from 5,800 a year ago—and the company’s R&D expenditure plummeted 31% last year to $3.1 billion.
Compounding the internal cuts are significant policy headwinds. Last fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted from a universal COVID vaccination recommendation to an individual-based decision-making process.
The FDA further added to the uncertainty clouding the entire vaccine industry earlier this year. The agency first controversially refused to review Moderna’s submission for its flu vaccine candidate but then accepted a revised application.
These external factors have pressured Moderna’s stock price, which, in turn, has hurt Bancel’s realized pay.
Moderna’s total shareholder return over the 2023-2025 performance period was the lowest among peer companies, leading to a total realized pay for Bancel that was at the 20th percentile of the group, according to the proxy document. The peer group that Moderna’s board uses to benchmark its exec pay includes other large commercial biotech companies such as Alnylam, Biogen, Sarepta Therapeutics and Vertex.
In addition, upon evaluation of the 2023-2025 review cycle, performance-based share awards granted to Bancel in 2023 vested at only 50% of target, even lower than the 55% level last year for the 2022 awards. Thanks also to a significant decrease in Moderna’s stock price, awards that were worth $3.1 million at grant vested at a value of $473,326.
In addition, all stock options granted to Bancel from 2021-2024 remain underwater, meaning the exercise price of the equity awards is higher than the current stock price.