After the mad race for vaccines, the time has come for the first assessments for pharmaceutical laboratories. The pandemic has created a colossal new market for vaccine manufacturers. If not everyone is benefiting from the health crisis, some manufacturers are seeing their sales – and their profits – soar thanks to the pandemic.
Over the first three months of 2021, Pfizer’s messenger RNA vaccine – developed in partnership with the German company BioNTech with which it shares half of the profits – thus brought in 3.5 billion dollars (2.9 billion euros ) to the American giant. That is much more than what the pharmaceutical company earns in one year from the sale of some of its star products. A very good deal therefore. All the more so as the industrialist, which has already shipped more than 430 million doses worldwide, continues to amass contracts with the States to supply new ones.
On the strength of this performance, Pfizer has revised its sales forecasts for anti-Covid vaccines upwards. Instead of the 15 billion dollars expected for the whole year, the group estimates that they will rather reach 26 billion dollars.
His compatriot, Moderna, is not badly off either. The biotech, which began deliveries to the United States at the same time as Pfizer, expects to earn $ 18 billion with its vaccine in 2021. A radical change for this young company, which, until now, had never achieved of profits. His boss, the French Stéphane Bancel, is now a billionaire, with a fortune estimated at 3.5 billion euros. Just like Ugur Sahin, the founder and leader of BioNTech.
These two biotechs, unknown to the general public a year ago, have seen their share prices explode thanks to the pandemic. Moderna’s market capitalization increased 3.5-fold in one year, reaching $ 69.5 billion. That of BioNTech amounts to nearly 43 billion dollars. What to rejoice the shareholders. Alongside these blazing results, sales of vaccines from AstraZeneca ($ 275 million) and Johnson & Johnson ($ 100 million) are poor.
Promising outlook
Unlike their rivals, these two laboratories – which have developed adenovirus vaccines – have chosen to sell their doses at cost during the time of the pandemic. But the occurrence of several rare cases of thromboembolic disorders has cast doubt on this technology. And the production difficulties of AstraZeneca, which is accumulating delivery delays in orders to the European Union (EU), have not helped the Anglo-Swedish group’s business.
You have 33.2% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.