Investing.com -- Citi downgraded Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) to Sell from Neutral on Wednesday, telling investors that the stock's rally has gone too far. The bank raised its price target for MRNA to $80 from $60.

Moderna shares have climbed 222% since the company reported interim results from its INTerpath-001 cancer trial, analyst Geoff Meacham noted. Over the same period, the XBI biotech index fell 2% and the S&P 500 was flat.

Meacham said Moderna's cancer treatment intismeran could become a leading therapy in melanoma. However, he believes the share price now assumes success across many tumor types and implies unrealistic sales.

"We struggle to justify the valuation through public-company comparisons or pipeline NPV," he wrote. “Moderna’s ~$80B market cap approximates Regeneron’s despite materially lower expected revenue and earnings.”

Even assuming a 100% probability of success for intismeran's lead cancer programs, Citi's net present value analysis supports only about $100 a share, over 50% below current levels.

Reaching about $200 a share would require roughly $26 billion in annual cancer sales, of which $13 billion would go to Moderna. That is nearly seven times Citi's forecast.

The INTerpath-001 trial met its endpoints, but the numerical results have not been disclosed. Meacham said investors now need to see a strong treatment effect, clear benefit and consistency across patient groups to justify the valuation.

He also cautioned that melanoma does not broadly validate the technology, as the disease responds well to immunotherapy.

Citi said the current valuation leaves a negatively skewed risk-reward profile. Moderna shares are down around 5.4% premarket.

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