Yesterday, Pfizer released a strong earnings report (surpassing Wall Street’s elevated projections), and also revealed that it’s both on the cusp of securing regulatory approval in the US for minors between the ages of 12 and 15 to receive the vaccine (setting off another wave of demand as the Biden Administration heaps pressure on states to get their vaccination numbers up).
During a call with analysts and reporters, CEO Albert Bourla revealed that Pfizer is in talks with “basically all the governments of the world” about providing shots and booster shots through 2024.
The key number is that Pfizer expects sales of its coronavirus jab to hit $26 billion by the end of this year, a milestone that would make the vaccine the company’s biggest-selling pharmaceutical product, eclipsing Humira, the popular rheumatoid arhtritis drug made by Abbvie. Also, Pfizer said it intends to use its mRNA technology underpinning its COVID-19 jab for other therapies and vaccines. For example, the company is working on creating seasonal flu shots using the same RNA lipid nanoparticle technology.
Bourla has already primed the public to expect to receive at least one additional shot within a year of their second dose, while also teasing the likelihood that the world might require annual booster shots – something that would be a boon to Pfizer’s bottom line as it moves to grow its COVID-19 vaccine division into a major, and permanent, line of business.
To help make its product more durable (and thus increase demand in poorer countries) the company said it is studying whether doses ould be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures.
Regardless, Bourla expects “durable demand” for vaccnes, similar to the flu vaccine.
“It is our hope that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will continue to have a global impact by helping to get the devastating pandemic under control and helping economies around the world not only open, but stay open,” Bourla said in prepared remarks.
That’s bad news for the rag-tag band of emerging-market economies pushing a proposal at the WTO to waive IP rights when it comes to vaccine technology. If Washington were to back such a move, it would supercharge the “open vaccine” movement, and represent a major threat to Pfizer’s latest profit stream. That effort is being led by India and South Africa, yet Bill Gates and Washington lobbyists have continued to insist that respecting IP and letting Big Pharma handle global distribution (as Covax dramatically lags expectations), which means the status quo is likely safe. – READ MORE
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