It's likely that a good proportion of you reading this newsletter received a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at some point in the last 18 months.
For Pfizer, those billions of doses have translated into a record financial performance, with the COVID-19 vaccine (COMIRNATY) bringing in $36.8bn last year — more than any pharmaceutical product has ever sold in a single year.
Incredibly, Pfizer's 2022 is likely to be even better than its 2021, as the company's COVID pill, Paxlovid, hits the market. Indeed, Pfizer announced this week it expects Paxlovid to contribute an incremental $22bn in revenues next year, with the original COVID vaccine good for another $32bn.
The pharmaceutical industry is a unique one, not just because its products can save lives, but because the economics are so unlike any other. Researching, developing and getting drugs approved is an unbelievably long and expensive task. But once achieved, the marginal costs are usually only a fraction of the end sales price — Pfizer incurred just $31bn of direct costs for its $81bn of sales.
Half full, half empty
Whatever your political persuasion, it's easy to reframe these results in a way that pleases. Pandemic profiteering by big pharma? Or the market's solution to a huge problem that the world needed solving? Take your pick.
