A record share price surge put Moderna back in the headlines, but the bigger story may be what it signals for the future of medicine. Milford Investment Analyst Dr Deborah Lambie joins Ryan Bridge to discuss the breakthrough personalised cancer treatment developed by Moderna and Merck, how mRNA technology is moving beyond Covid-19 vaccines, and why investors believe this could be one of the most significant healthcare developments in years. They also explore the opportunities, risks and commercial realities behind the excitement.
Click here to download the MP3 file or listen to the podcast on your favourite platform:
Bridge talks Business: 1 September 2026
Episode Transcript
Ryan
Kia ora and welcome to episode 91 of Bridge Talks Business with Milford. This week, Dr. Deb Lambie is back in the hot seat. As her title suggests, not only is she a qualified doctor of medicine, she’s also an investment analyst covering global equities at Milford, specialises in healthcare.
Pop quiz for this week’s episode. Which healthcare stock price shot up almost 200% in a single day last week? Dr. Deb will tell us. First, your top five.
-
- Coming in at number one, US Fed boss Kevin Warsh doubling down in his speech at Jackson Hole. Very keen to get inflation back to target after five years of elevated price changes in the US. But there was still very little clarity on how he might actually achieve that. Market is pricing an increased chance of a rate hike in two weeks time. But will he back up his strong words with action?
- Number two, last week also saw tech hardware NVIDIA report results. Investors very much like the uplift in revenue growth forecast for 2028 to 70% indicating the company believes the AI capex cycle has plenty of runway ahead.
- Coming in at number three, Australian spending data revealing households spent 7% more over the past year. This is in spite of rate hikes from the RBA in the last few months. Monthly inflation data was also hotter than expected. And it’s three and a half percent remains above target. Market continues to price in at least one more hike from the RBA in the coming six months.
- Coming in at number four, New Zealand second quarter retail sales data revealed a strong 6.6% annual gain. But the data for the quarter was weaker as sales ex inflation actually fell half a percent. This probably overstates the weakness in the economy. It was skewed by a reduction in fuel spending. Core spending volumes were up 0.7% in the quarter.
- Finally, number five this week, we look to the RBNZ where another normalization hike of 0.25% is fully expected by the market. Investors will focus on projections in the monetary policy statement. The May projection showed the peak of the OCR cycle at 3.3%. The market reckons it’ll be higher.
Alright it is time for our feature interview this week we are speaking with Dr Deb Lambie, investment analyst covering global equities here to talk about healthcare. Just a reminder this segment is informational only and should not be considered financial advice.
Dr. Deb, welcome back.
Deborah
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Ryan
Oh, look, I’ll get you back anytime. So tell me about, we know, we’ve talked, you know, to the nth degree about tech stocks. Tech’s been doing very well. What about healthcare?
Deborah
Yeah, so it’s been interesting this year. Healthcare as a sector has delivered around 11.5% return so far this year, which is actually really strong. And when you compare it to the rest of the market, it’s slightly behind about 2 percentage points. But that has been super concentrated. And as you’ve said, tech has been really strong.
That’s up 50% this year on the back of AI. And also, energy has been really strong, driven by the conflict in the Middle East.
In healthcare over time, what we know about healthcare is that demand is really resilient.
So, we know that there’s a few certainties in life, death, taxes, and unfortunately, maybe becoming sick on the way. And so we see really nice, resilient demand. And that’s what we’ve seen this year. And then we’ve also seen a few other things like we’ve seen strong bio pharma, M&A. And then we’ve had some exciting developments recently, that in my mind as a healthcare analyst, are similar to, in terms of like magnitude as to what we saw during the COVID with COVID vaccines, and also GLP-1’s have been really big developments. And the latest is this new type of cancer treatment, which is individualized. And that’s driven a lot of excitement in share markets.
Ryan
You officially have my attention, because I get up really early, as you know, and all the international headlines over the past couple of weeks, all the big ones have been about particular health stocks, and particular breakthroughs to do with cancer treatments, that sort of thing.
So, I asked at the beginning of this episode for people, a little pop quiz, guess which stock jumped almost 200%?
Deborah
Yes.
Ryan
Which stock was it?
Deborah
So that was Moderna and that was a record one day gain, it was up 180% in a day. The reason for that was that it released positive phase three results, in conjunction with a company called Merck, which is a much bigger company, and its shares were up around 10% on the day.
Essentially what it gave was positive phase three result for an individualized cancer treatment, which is called individualized neoantigen therapy, or INT therapy. So, there was a lot of excitement on that day around that.
Ryan
What is that? What does it do?
Deborah
So, what it essentially is, is there’s three things.
So, what the technology does is first of all, the surgeon will take so it’s this first phase three trials in melanoma. Which is an aggressive type of skin cancer. And what they’ll do is they’ll take a sample of your melanoma. And then what they’ll do, is essentially the best way to think about it is, they have technology that will use an algorithm that will identify specific mutations in that melanoma (around 34 of them) to determine the unique fingerprint of that melanoma. And then they take that unique fingerprint, and then they generate an individualized vaccine, which then is given to the patient, and that trains your own immune system to identify and target those cancer cells.
Ryan
It’s like boutique. It’s targeted for your particular type of melanoma.
Deborah
Exactly. So, if you had a melanoma, which hopefully you never do, they’ll take your specific melanoma, they’ll take six weeks to make a specific vaccine for your melanoma, then you’ll get that specific one. And then it will treat your one specifically.
So, it’s definitely a step change, and a step forward in personalized cancer treatment.
Ryan
And what results did they get? Is that you know, out of this?
Deborah
So, what we saw was interim results, so very high level results at this point, and we have to wait a little bit to get the final data. But what we saw is that it essentially prevented the cancer from spreading to other organs, and stopped it spreading. So those are the two key points that predict long term survival. And while we’re waiting for those long term numbers, they stopped the trial early because it was so effective. And analysts are speculating that meant that when this treatment is used, it increases your chances of survival by around 35%. So, it’s 35% more effective than the current standard of care, which is a drug called Keytruda.
Ryan
Would you give it to healthy people to stop them getting cancer?
Deborah
Yeah
Ryan
Or is it just for people who have it?
Deborah
So that’s a really interesting point. And I think that’s where some of the headlines have actually been a little bit misleading because people have been asking me, is this a cure for cancer? So it’s a treatment that can be used for people who already have cancer. But it’s not like the COVID or flu vaccine that you’ll take every year that would stop you from getting it in the first place rather it’s something that we know you’ve got it and this is a way, a treatment, that will help your body.
Ryan
A tailored solution.
Deborah
Yeah, exactly.
Ryan
So, is the jump in the share price justified?
Deborah
So, this is my job is to try to work out, is it justified? And what we’ve seen is the shares went up massively on that day and then have pulled back a little bit. But there were essentially four reasons behind that massive share price move in Moderna on that day.
So firstly, we are familiar with Moderna because it was the COVID vaccine company, right? And so, since then, they haven’t been able to prove out that technology beyond respiratory viruses. So, this is the first proof point that the technology can be used in other types of cancers, which is obviously fantastic.
The second thing that drove that share price reaction was what we call a short squeeze. So actually, a lot of investors had been betting against Moderna shares. 15% of the shares outstanding were actually sold short. And so, when these positive results came out and sent the shares up to limit their losses, traders had to buy in, which actually sends the shares higher. So there’s those two.
And then thirdly, those cancer cure, cancer vaccine headlines drove a lot of interest from retail investors and generalist investors. So sometimes you can see a lot of investing in healthcare, especially in pharma companies is done by specialist healthcare investors. So, when there’s something like this, that captures the imagination of people, then you see a lot more money flow in. So, there was also that.
And then finally, as you said at the start, we’ve seen so much kind of excitement around tech this year. And some of that is just starting to wear off a little bit. And investors are looking for other areas.
Ryan
A new shiny thing.
Deborah
Yeah, a new shiny thing. So, we saw that. So, all of those factors put together, sent the shares up on the day.
Ryan
How much money could it make annually?
Deborah
That’s a really good question as well. So, if you look at just skin cancer alone and analysts are estimating that that could be around a billion dollars a year.
If you expand that to say bladder and kidney cancer, that could be around five billion dollars a year. And they sound like big numbers, but it’s important to put it into context. A few pointers.
Firstly, during COVID, Moderna’s COVID vaccine revenue was 18 billion dollars. So, the Moderna shares have come up a little bit on the back of this. But if you look back during COVID, when investors were extrapolating that kind of revenue, the shares were up a whole lot. So, they are still down well below COVID highs.
And then in this instance, the profits of the say billion dollars in skin cancer or five billion dollars across skin bladder, kidney, those are shared 50-50 with Merck. And also, because it’s individualized, it’s very expensive to manufacture. And so that means the drug by itself will be very expensive. And it’s currently estimated, we don’t know, but that it will be around $200,000 US dollars per course, which is a lot. But if it’s really expensive to manufacture, the profits might not actually be that great. So, I think seeing how all of this plays out over time will be important.
Ryan
All so fascinating. Dr. Deb, finally this morning, does Milford have shares in Moderna?
Deborah
We don’t invest directly in Moderna, but we do invest in a number of companies that will indirectly benefit. So, I’ll give you a few examples.
A first example would be a company called Danaher. Danaher makes kind of the picks and shovels that are used in mRNA production. So, they will benefit.
We invest in a company called Lonza, which makes drugs, it’s a contract drug manufacturer. And they have invested in mRNA capacity. So, they will benefit as mRNA medicines become more, I guess, used at scale.
We also invest in a company called Sandoz. And Sandoz makes biosimilars, which are special cheaper versions of drugs that you use instead of drugs when they come off patents. So, when Keytruda, which is the current standard of care, comes off its patent in 2029, then Sandoz will manufacture a biosimilar. So, the same version of that that’s essentially a lot cheaper, which can then be used in conjunction with this therapy.
Ryan
Fascinating.
Deborah
So, rather than kind of chasing the single volatility that we’ve seen in this one stock, we have exposure through a number of other different companies.
Ryan
Wow. There you go. You heard it from Dr. Deb. Lovely to have you on the podcast.
Deborah
Thank you. Great to be here.
Ryan
That was Dr Deb Lambie, investment analyst covering global equities from Milford talking to us about healthcare. Just a reminder you can like, follow and subscribe this podcast wherever you like to listen or watch, we love you doing so. Until next week don’t forget to invest in yourselves.
Missed previous episode? Don’t worry! Click here to catch up now.
