Pfizer drops guidance on sales as net profit jumps 47% in Q4

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer dropped its 2023 revenue guidance on falling Covid vaccine sales after posting a 47 per cent rise in last year’s fourth-quarter net profit.

The New York-based company’s net profit jumped to nearly $5 billion in the threemonth period. Its October-December revenue rose by about 2 per cent annually to $24.29 billion, it said.

The drug maker’s net income for the past full financial year increased by 43 per cent to more than $31.3 billion. Sales in 2022 jumped by 23 per cent to more than $100.3 billion, an all-time high, driven by higher sales of Covid-19 vaccines, Pfizer said.

The company expects its full-year sales to drop to between $67 billion and $71 billion, as the pandemic eases and sales of its Covid vaccines drop.

Pfizer’s adjusted earnings per share rose 45 per cent yearly to $1.14 per share in the last quarter. Sales of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine dropped almost 9 per cent on an annual basis to $11.3 billion in the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, Paxlovid contributed $1.8 billion in global revenue in the last quarter. Paxlovid is a treatment for Covid-19 patients, but it does not prevent infection. It was found to reduce the risk of hospital admission or death from the virus by 90 per cent in a clinical trial of adults.

“As we turn to 2023, we expect to once again set records, with potentially the largest number of new product and indication launches that we have ever had in such a short period of time,” Albert Bourla, chairman and chief executive of Pfizer, said.

“We believe that the combination of these expected near-term launches, additional pipeline products that could potentially come to market in the medium-term, and anticipated contributions from business development, has the potential to set the company up for continued robust growth through the rest of this decade and beyond.”

The company expects $13.5 billion in Covid vaccine sales this year, an annual decline of 64 per cent.

Mr Bourla said this should be a “transition year”, representing a low point in the company’s Covid-related revenue. However, he expects an increase in Covid-19 vaccination rates from 2025, assuming the successful development and approval of a Covid/flu combination product.

“A successful introduction of a Covid/flu combo could over time bring the percentage of Americans receiving the Covid-19 vaccine closer to the portion of people getting flu shots … outside the US, we expect these general trends to be similar,” he said.