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Albert Bourla, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Albert Bourla, Pfizer‘s
CEO, he has no patience with the argument that pharmaceutical companies should not make a profit from the drugs and vaccines they introduce to fight Covid-19.
“I think it is very bad,” said Bourla Barron’s on Tuesday. “You need to be very fanatical and radical to say something like this right now … Who is finding the solution? The private sector found the solution for the diagnosis, and the private sector found the solution for the therapeutic and is [the] way to find more solutions for therapies and vaccines. So how can you say something like that? Has no sense.
The kind of benefit that Pfizer (ticker: PFE) could reap from its Covid-19 vaccine remains unclear, but retrospective calculations suggest its revenue from the vaccine could be huge, if all goes well for the company.
Pfizer is one of the leaders in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, and began a phase 2/3 trial of its candidate vaccine on Monday. The company is charging the United States government $ 19.50 per dose for the first 100 million doses, a price that Bourla said Tuesday would be approximately the same rate that the company charged any developed country that promised to buy a similar dose volume.
The price of the Covid-19 vaccine has come under increased scrutiny in recent days, as programs by Pfizer and other drug makers have moved ahead. At a House subcommittee hearing last week, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, asked pharmaceutical companies that received government research and development aid on their Covid-19 to commit to selling their vaccine to a cost.
Pfizer, which has long said it intends to make a profit from its Covid-19 vaccine, is only among the top manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines that have not received government aid for research.
“During the pandemic, we just went with the price that is the lowest end of everything that exists,” says Bourla. “They are fractions of the vaccines of this high technology that are sold [for] In the USA”
In an article from last weekend, Barron’s He calculated that at $ 19.50 per dose, the 1.3 billion doses the company has said it plans to do by the end of next year could translate to nearly $ 13 billion in sales, after the company splits its revenue with partner BioNTech. (BNTX). Just like Pfizer’s best-selling drug of all time, Lipitor, sold in its best year.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” said Pfizer chief financial officer Frank D’Amelio when asked about the calculation.
The company has unveiled perhaps the most aggressive development schedule among companies in the Covid-19 vaccine race. Bourla said Tuesday that the company expected to dose most of the participants in its Phase 2/3 study by the end of August, and present the vaccine to the Food and Drug Administration in October.
Pfizer’s aggressive timeline for its Covid-19 vaccine contrasts with comments from Merck CEO (MRK) Ken Frazier, who said in an interview with a Harvard Business School professor published July 13 that “when people It tells the public that there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, I think they seriously harm the public. “
When asked about the criticism, Bourla said that Pfizer had handled large clinical trials before, and that meeting the aggressive schedule was only possible if everything worked exactly as planned.
“So far, we have been performing meticulously well,” Bourla said. “I have repeatedly said that in order to do that, the stars must be aligned, and I am very surprised that they are still aligned, but so far they are. And now, we started our Phase 3 study yesterday. “
Bourla spoke to Barron’s shortly after Pfizer reported earnings that exceeded Wall Street expectations. They come as the company prepares to spin off its Upjohn division, which sells older drugs, and is exclusively dedicated to developing new pharmaceuticals. The spin-off will now take place in the fourth quarter of this year, later than initially expected. D’Amelio said the delay was entirely the result of interruptions related to Covid-19.
While Bourla sold to investors and analysts about the new direction for Pfizer, he emphasized a projected annual sales growth rate of 6% for the next five years. One drug meant to help fuel that growth was the anti-cancer drug Ibrance, which Pfizer was testing in early breast cancer. That trial failed in May, prompting a 7.2% decline in shares the following trading day.
Bourla says he was “very surprised” that the trial failed, but that the 6% sales growth rate projection still holds. “6% were based on a very wide range of products” at various stages of development with different odds of success, he says. “If it was one or two, then you can have binary events that can go up or down in a big way.” He says the company had other successes that balance Ibrance’s disappointment.
Pfizer shares closed 4% on Friday. The shares are now stable since the beginning of the year.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
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