Pharmaceutical companies make hundreds of billions from the corona vaccine

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna can generate $ 32 billion, or about 280 billion kronor, from the sale of the corona vaccine just next year, writes CNN.

Billions and billions

Analysts at US investment bank Morgan Stanley estimate that Pfizer, which will share the revenues with German company BioNTech, will receive $ 19 billion next year alone. Also, there is an estimated amount of almost a billion dollars this year.

In 2022 and 2023, Pfizer will be able to increase revenue by an additional $ 9.3 billion in vaccine sales, Morgan Stanley believes.

Pfizer is a gigantic company, and in that sense, the vaccine news hasn’t directly triggered the stock price, although a 12 percent gain so far this year is pretty solid.

So the ever-improving vaccine news has hit Pfizer partner German BioNTech the hardest. The company’s US shares are up more than 300 percent. The market value of the company is now estimated at nearly $ 30 billion.

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– historic achievement

Vaccine news has had an even bigger impact on Moderna, which is a relatively new company. The share price has risen 700 percent this year and analysts estimate that half of the company’s market value is linked to the vaccine.

They are estimated to raise $ 13.2 billion in vaccine revenue next year, according to Goldman Sachs.

That’s a pretty hefty sum for a company that sold for $ 60 million in 2019 and has never licensed a product before.

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– Pandemic, not a business idea

The large sums of money that now end up in the hands of pharmaceutical companies are not something that is applauded by all.

– A pandemic is a global public health crisis, not a business idea, says MSF field doctor Erlend Grønningen to Børsen.

He points out that these are primarily patent rights, something MSF has been working on for 20 years.

– We map prices, drugs and benefits. We have been doing it for many years and this is not a new phenomenon, but it is a new disease, says Grønningen.

He says they hear from the Norwegian authorities that for no profit, there is no incentive to develop vaccines for large companies.

– At best, it’s imprecise, as we see it. We keep track of what the various have received from public grants, and what the public sector has contributed, to a fuller picture of this here, says Grønningen.

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Billion Dollar Help

Moderna has so far received nearly $ 2.5 billion, more than NOK 20 billion, from the US authorities.

Just over 1.5 billion of this sum is tied to an August deal, in which US authorities pledged to buy 100 million doses of the vaccine.

Pfizer, for its part, has been very clear that it has not received money from the US authorities, but through its partner BioNTech they have still received almost 375 million euros from the German authorities, as well as a loan of up to 100 million euros of the European Investment Bank.

In total, it amounts to around NOK 5 billion.

Dissociates from Trump

The EU has also reached an agreement to buy up to 300 million doses of the vaccine, while the United States it should have promised to spend almost 20 billion crowns on the purchase of 100 million doses.

– With both vaccines, the public sector has taken a significant risk, says Grønningen.

He also points out that the calculation can be extended, especially when looking at the vaccine for Pfizer, which was developed by BioNTech in Germany, by Germans.

– When we started talking about costs: where did these Germans get their doctorates? Where are they educated? We get another clear answer: they are trained in the German public system. The mastermind behind the vaccine is funded by the public sector, says Grønningen.

Pfizer’s vaccine is currently approved for use in Canada and the United Kingdom, while Bahrain, Mexico and the United States have granted emergency approval for its use. The EU warns that they can approve the vaccine before the New Year.

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Cost price, what is it?

As for the third vaccine that has received wide publicity, the vaccine from the AstraZeneca company, they say that the vaccine will be sold at cost throughout the pandemic.

Grønningen is not necessarily impressed by it.

– They will be able to define when the pandemic ends. And what is the cost price? What is the cost price in Europe and what is it in the United States? They must show the calculation so that we can attest to it. Then we have to look at the expenses, and they have to show that the calculation is real, says Grønningen.

Says no to patent revocation

Grønningen points to an initiative taken by South Africa and India, supported by more than 100 countries, calling for patent protection to be temporarily removed, which can make medicines and vaccines cheaper and easier to manufacture, also in developing countries.

Norway, along with the EU and the US, are among the countries that have opposed this scheme, claiming that the exception is broad.

– The government fears that such a proposal may go against its purpose, Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide wrote in a response to the Storting.

The government also fears that it may curtail research and development of drugs and equipment.

MSF disagrees. They point out that in addition to a purely price problem, where poor countries will struggle financially to gain access to vaccines, there are also problems producing enough vaccines.

– The production capacity in the west is not high enough. We must start vaccine production in India, which is called the world’s pharmacy, says Grønningen.

So far, India and South Africa are unlikely to get support for his proposal.