Last checked at 
* Sold stake over the course of 2020 - annual report https://bit.ly/3kwJ1UM
* Received $1.38 bln from all stake sales last year
* Moderna shares up 2.5% in premarket, AstraZeneca up 0.6%
(Adds AZ stake size from 2019 report)
March 1 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca sold a stake it held
in rival COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna over the course
of last year, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker's latest annual report
shows.
London-listed AstraZeneca did not specify how much it sold
the stake for, but said that "a large proportion" of the $1.38
billion it recorded in equity portfolio sales last year came
from the Moderna disposal.
Moderna, whose coronavirus vaccine was cleared for U.S.
emergency use in December, last week said it was expecting $18.4
billion in sales from the vaccine this year, putting it on track
for its first profit since its founding in 2010.
AstraZeneca initially invested in Moderna in 2013, paying it
$240 million upfront and later building up its stake as it bet
on newer technologies to offset losses from patent expiries. (https://bit.ly/3kwJ1UM)
Shares in Texas-based Moderna, which listed in 2018, surged
more than five times in value last year after starting
development of its COVID-19 vaccine and receiving its first
approval within the span of a few months.
Moderna's shot uses a new technology called mRNA, which
relies on synthetic genes to send a message to the body's immune
system to build immunity and can be produced at scale more
rapidly than conventional vaccines like AstraZeneca's.
Cambridge, England-based AstraZeneca's vaccine being
developed with Oxford University uses a weakened version of a
chimpanzee common cold virus to deliver immunity-building
proteins to the body.
AstraZeneca's stake in Moderna stood at 7.65% at the end of
2019, its annual report for that year showed. (https://bit.ly/3dTqn8x)
Based on Moderna's 2020 closing stock price of $104.47, a
stake that size would be worth about $3.2 billion, Reuters
calculations show.
Moderna shares were up about 2.5% in U.S. premarket trading
on Monday. AstraZeneca shares were up 0.6% at 69.9 pounds in
London.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka, Kanishka Singh and Maria
Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; editing by Peter Cooney, Jason Neely
and David Evans)
