COVID-19 treatments drive Pfizer’s annual earnings up to $100bn

Big Pharma giant Pfizer’s annual earnings in 2022 reached $100bn, a considerable proportion of which came from its COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment, Paxlovid.

The company’s $100.3bn earnings marked an all-time high for Pfizer, demonstrating a 23% increase on its earnings from 2021. Its profits for the year were $31bn, a 43% increase on the previous year.

Excluding its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment, Pfizer’s revenues grew by 2% over the entire year, and 5% in the fourth quarter.

In 2022, Pfizer reported approximately $57bn revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine and Paxlovid, however the company expects this to decrease exponentially throughout 2023 due to high levels of existing government supply and the commercialisation of the vaccine.

Pfizer’s chief executive officer, Dr Albert Bourla, commented in a press release: “2022 was a record-breaking year for Pfizer, not only in terms of revenue and earnings per share, which were the highest in our long history, but more importantly, in terms of the percentage of patients who have a positive perception of Pfizer and the work we do. As proud as we are about what we have accomplished, our focus is always on what is next. 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’ve ever had in such a short period of time. 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.”

Betsy Goodfellow