CEO Al­bert Bourla says fi­nal sales for COVID-19 an­tivi­ral Paxlovid could be “way big­ger” than fore­casts.

SOURCE: AL­JAZEERA

Pfiz­er Inc said on Tues­day it ex­pects 2022 sales of its COVID-19 vac­cine and an­tivi­ral pill to top $54bn, but that fell short of lofty Wall Street es­ti­mates and its shares were off about 3 per­cent.

Still, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Al­bert Bourla said fi­nal sales for its oral COVID-19 an­tivi­ral, Paxlovid, could be “way big­ger” than what Pfiz­er has fore­cast since its cur­rent out­look on­ly in­clud­ed con­tracts that have been or are close to be­ing signed.

Pfiz­er cur­rent­ly ex­pects $22bn in 2022 sales of the treat­ment, com­pared with Wall Street es­ti­mates of $22.88bn.

“Clear­ly, this is on­ly a frac­tion of the 120 mil­lion treat­ments that we are right now prepar­ing to man­u­fac­ture” this year, Bourla told an­a­lysts on a con­fer­ence call.

The com­pa­ny is sell­ing 20 mil­lion cours­es of Paxlovid to the Unit­ed States at about $530 a course, but Bourla said that was a spe­cial price be­cause of the size of the or­der.

The price for most high-in­come coun­tries, he said, would be more or less in line with the price of Mer­ck & Co’s ri­val treat­ment mol­nupi­ravir, which the US gov­ern­ment bought for about $700 a course.

Pfiz­er ex­ec­u­tives said the com­pa­ny is in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with more than 100 coun­tries about Paxlovid and has the ca­pac­i­ty to top 120 mil­lion cours­es if need­ed.

For the COVID-19 vac­cine Pfiz­er de­vel­oped with Ger­many’s BioN­Tech SE, the US drug­mak­er cau­tioned that fi­nal sales for the year may not top its cur­rent fore­cast of $32bn, a 13 per­cent de­cline from 2021 lev­els.

Im­proved ver­sion of Paxlovid

Last year, the com­pa­ny in­creased its COVID vac­cine sales fore­cast sev­er­al times as it signed more sup­ply deals around the world.

An­a­lysts have fore­cast sales of $33.79bn for the vac­cine in 2022, ac­cord­ing to Re­fini­tiv da­ta.

Over­all, Pfiz­er ex­pects 2022 sales of $98bn to $102bn, al­so be­low es­ti­mates of $105.48bn.

“Look­ing for­ward is not as good as look­ing back for Pfiz­er now and that is why (the stock price) is down on a some­what de­cent re­port,” said Den­nis Dick, a pro­pri­etary trad­er at Bright Trad­ing LLC.

Go­ing for­ward, “ac­qui­si­tions are ob­vi­ous­ly very much in the cards,” said Aamir Ma­lik, Pfiz­er’s chief busi­ness in­no­va­tion of­fi­cer.

Some in­vestors have been look­ing for Pfiz­er to use its huge cash in­fu­sion from COVID prod­ucts on deals to dri­ve fu­ture growth.

Pfiz­er said it had be­gun work­ing on a next-gen­er­a­tion ver­sion of Paxlovid, which is au­tho­rized to treat high-risk COVID-19 pa­tients short­ly af­ter the on­set of symp­toms.

Paxlovid per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter in its clin­i­cal tri­als than Mer­ck’s ri­val pill with about 90 per­cent ef­fi­ca­cy ver­sus 30 per­cent.

But Pfiz­er may still need an im­proved ver­sion of Paxlovid, ac­cord­ing to Davin­der­preet Man­gat, se­nior an­a­lyst at In­for­ma Phar­ma In­tel­li­gence.

“The door is slight­ly open, still, for COVID an­tivi­rals,” Man­gat said. “Drugs from oth­er com­pa­nies may be able to sur­pass Paxlovid, sim­i­lar to how Paxlovid sur­passed Mer­ck’s drug.”