February 10, 2022
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has posted its results for Q4 2022, with quarterly revenue of $23.8bn and profits of $3.39bn, up 400% year-on-year. Total revenues for the year therefore reached $81.3bn, including $36.8bn from the company’s Comirnaty vaccine against Covid-19, developed together with German firm BioNTech. Annual profits reached $22bn, more than double the figure from 2020. Although profits exceeded analysts’ predictions, the level of revenues fell short of projections of around $100bn, and the company’s stocks fell by 5.2% on announcement of the figures.
At the beginning of 2021, Pfizer forecast vaccine sales of $15bn, but this target was raised repeatedly, and sales eventually easily cleared double this amount, with $12.5bn of sales in Q4 alone, becoming one of the most profitable products in history. Not everyone is impressed by these figures. Campaign group Global Justice Now accused Pfizer of “ripping off public health systems”, and noted that the company’s revenue is now bigger than the GDP of most countries.
For 2022, Pfizer is expecting combined sales of more than $50bn for its anti-Covid products, with revenues from the vaccine slightly down at $32bn, but more than compensated by new anti-viral pill Paxlovid ($22bn). Both of these forecasts are based on contracts signed as of late January, and are considered to be conservative. The company is expecting to produce 6 million courses of the new drug in Q1 2022, rising to 30 million for the first six months and 120 million courses for the whole year. The US government has ordered 20 million courses, at $530 per unit, while for most countries this price will be closer to $700. In total, the company is expecting revenues of around $100bn for 2022.
The company’s vaccine was the first to be approved for use against the pandemic, and Paxlovid is similarly the first treatment on the market, with a success rate of nearly 90% in preventing a serious course of the disease. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared it for emergency use in December, and it has since been approved in 40 other countries.
“2021 was a watershed year for Pfizer,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. At the start of the pandemic, he said, the company had “committed to use all of the resources and expertise we had at our disposal to help protect populations globally against this deadly virus. Our successes in leading the fight against Covid-19 have not only made a positive difference in the world; I believe they have fundamentally changed our company forever.”
The company’s vaccine, alongside those of Moderna and the UK’s AstraZeneca, have saved millions of lives and been critical in fighting the vaccine, but Pfizer in particular has faced stinging criticism over its protectionist approach to the recipe and production of its products, which activists say have prevented their manufacture in poorer countries and slowed the roll-out in the developing world, denounced as “vaccine apartheid”. This is despite the fact that the Comirnaty vaccine was invented by BioNTech, using nine-figure grants from the European Investment Bank and the German government. One former US government official described the widespread use of the term ‘Pfizer vaccine’ as “the biggest marketing coup in the history of American pharmaceuticals”.
Tim Bierley of Global Justice Now said that Pfizer’s mammoth profits represented “nothing short of pandemic profiteering”, while so many remained unvaccinated. “We’ve let Pfizer withhold this essential medical innovation from much of the world, all while ripping off public health systems with an eye-watering mark-up,” he said. Pfizer says that one dose costs $6.75 at cost price, but sales-per-unit to rich countries have been several times this figure, with prices marked up by up to 300%. A spokesperson for Pfizer insisted that this was significantly below pre-pandemic benchmarks, and that the company was “firmly committed to equitable and affordable access” to vaccines, while stressing the high costs of developing the product and bringing it to market. The company points out that poor countries pay a discounted price for the vaccine of as low as $3 per dose, but this only represents 1.3% of total sales. “Pfizer is now richer than most countries; it has made more than enough money from this crisis. It’s time to suspend intellectual property and break vaccine monopolies,” said Bierley. The company is now trialling a new vaccine focused on the Omicron variant, as well as further developing new oral Covid-19 treatments. Although Bourla said Pfizer does not expect Covid-19 can be eradicated in the foreseeable future, he said that “we now have the tools – in the forms of vaccines and treatments – that we believe will help enable us to not only better manage the pandemic but also help countries move into the endemic phase.” However, outside of its anti-Covid products, Pfizer’s total sales have been sluggish, leading questions over whether the company can consolidate the huge cash injection from the success of its vaccine into moves to promote future growth, beyond a mega payday for shareholders.
