Pfizer and Moderna could see their profits implode as investors brace for a precipitous drop in vaccine sales. Wall Street analysts believe the writing is on the wall.
The Financial Times reported that revenues from the Covid vaccine dwarfs Pfizer’s other “blockbuster” products that boast annual sales in excess of $1 billion. For 2021, Pfizer expected a profit margin of almost 30 percent from sales of its Covid injections.
But as the number of vaccine injuries continue to rise, the Covid vaccine market is becoming a challenge for pharmaceutical companies. They have now hyped up advertising to entice patients and doctors to take the shot. Both Pfizer and Moderna have hired new staff to promote their products. Last month, Pfizer recruited a salesforce especially to advertise its booster shot while Moderna has expanded its US marketing team.
This will not change the outlook for these companies. Wall Street analysts concur that Big Pharma will have to manage investors’ expectations: An expected huge drop in their share prices as vaccine injuries continue to pile up.
Analysts caution that Pfizer, which is valued at more than $250 billion, will not be able to push their sales pitch beyond 2023 or a third “booster” shot.
Wall Street heavyweight JPMorgan said Pfizer’s Covid vaccine sales were “unlikely to be sustainable anywhere near current levels longer-term”, while SVB Leerink analysts “see limitations in [Pfizer’s] growth prospects due to competitive pressures”.
Damien Conover, director of equity strategy at Morningstar said the vaccine jig was up: “It’s less clear if everyone needs boosters going forward. There’s an important distinction between a third booster and an annual booster.”
According to French news outlet Economiques Alternatives, the manufacturing costs of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are much lower than their selling price, even though the laboratories have hardly innovated or taken any commercial risks.
Both Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna, are benefiting from explosive and growing global demand: for 2021, Pfizer expects sales of $26 billion and Moderna of $18 billion.
Forbes has compiled an inventory of the 50 people who have been made billionaires by Covid: in the lead, Ugur Sahin, the founder of BioNtech, with a fortune of $4,2 billion, followed by Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, with 4,1 billion, at the same level as Yuan Liping, a 24 percent shareholder in Chinese vaccine producer Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Product after his divorce from the president of the company.
For its part, Oxfam International has immersed itself in company data: 5 billion in profits for Moderna and 4 billion for Pfizer-BioNtech in 2020. But the party seems to be over.
“The flu shot is available every year but only a minority of patients get it,” said Vamil Divan, senior healthcare analyst at Mizuho. “A good percentage of the country isn’t vaccinated yet so when it’s endemic it will be even less. [Sales] won’t be anywhere near what we saw this year.” He expects Pfizer’s Covid vaccine sales to decline to $2 billion by 2024.
Additionally, patents on several of Pfizer’s best-selling medicines are set to expire soon after, also crashing revenues.
For Moderna, the forthcoming revenue implosion will be even more pronounced. Its Covid vaccine is the company’s only approved drug, propelling the company to a $175 billion market capitalisation.
Their other products are even more experimental and untested: “One of their struggles is going to be that investors are going to look for the next big thing,” said Hartaj Singh, senior biotechnology analyst at Oppenheimer. “If their pan-respiratory programme doesn’t start producing some products over the 2024 timeframe, you’re going to start seeing some pain to the share price.”
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meanwhile voted 16-2 against US President Joe Biden’s proposed general “booster” shot roll-out. At a hearing on Friday, the Food and Drug administration’s (FDA) delivered explosive testimony revealing that “vaccines” were killing more people than saving them while also creating variants.
Dr. Steve Kirsch, director of the Covid-19 Early Treatment Fund and a committee member, did not mince words: “I’m going to focus my remarks today on the elephant in the room that nobody likes to talk about: that the vaccines kill more people than they save.”
Kirsch added: “For example, there are four times as many heart attacks in the treatment group in the Pfizer 6-month trial report. That wasn’t bad luck. VAERS shows heart attacks happened 71 times more often following these vaccines compared to any other vaccine.” Kirsch also pointed out that nursing home death data showed about half the vaccinated died, while none of the unvaccinated died.
“Even if the vaccines had a 100 percent protection, it still means we killed two people to save one life,” He underscored that “vaccines, boosters, and mandates are all nonsensical”.