Start with the contrast. Using the structured XBRL in each company's 2025 filings: Moderna reported research-and-development expense of $3.1 billion; Lilly reported total revenue of $65.2 billion; Vertex reported total revenue of $12.0 billion. The data shows a clearer story than any one ratio — these companies are at completely different points in the research-versus-revenue cycle.

Moderna is the research-intensive case. With revenue still rebuilding after its pandemic peak, its $3.1 billion R&D line — disclosed in the FY2025 10-K — represents a very large share of its business. A company whose spending on discovery rivals or exceeds its sales is, by definition, betting on the future rather than harvesting the present. That is the profile of a platform company mid-transition.

Lilly sits at the opposite pole. The FY2025 10-K tags $65.2 billion of revenue; R&D, while large in absolute dollars, is one input into a sprawling, cash-generative commercial engine. When revenue is that big and growing that fast, research intensity as a share of the top line falls even if the research budget rises — the denominator simply overwhelms it.

Vertex is the steady middle. With $12.0 billion of revenue in 2025 from the FY2025 10-K and a durable cystic-fibrosis franchise, it can fund ambitious bets — gene therapy, non-opioid pain — out of reliable cash flow rather than out of dilutive financings. That is a fundamentally different way to pay for research than Moderna's.

The methodological caution matters here. A clean, identical R&D-to-revenue ratio across all three would require pulling each company's R&D and revenue on the same basis and period, and reporting conventions differ. So the honest claim is directional, not a single computed percentage: Moderna is research-heavy relative to its size, Lilly's research is dwarfed by its sales, and Vertex self-funds from a steady base. Three filings, three strategies.

None of this is possible without comparable source data, which is what the EdgarBeast evidence index provides by normalizing the XBRL tags across issuers. Read the numbers side by side and you stop seeing biotech as one thing — you see a discovery company, a commercial juggernaut, and a self-funding compounder, each spending on research for a different reason.