Pfizer Rakes in Billions on COVID-19 Vaccine Sales, Highest Revenue in Company’s History

A vial labeled “Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine” is seen in this photo taken on Jan. 16, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Vaccine maker Pfizer has reported record revenues for 2022, with its COVID-19 products accounting for a large chunk of the sales even as the company is facing backlash for claiming to “mutate” viruses, and a growing number of doctors are turning away from boosters.

Full-year revenues for 2022 came in at $100.3 billion, which is an “all-time high” for the multinational corporation, according to the earnings release by Pfizer on Jan. 31. This is the first time the company has seen annual sales in excess of $100 billion, with revenues reflecting 30 percent operational growth. Excluding contributions from COVID-19 products, Comirnaty vaccine and Paxlovid antiviral, revenues only grew by 2 percent operationally. The two products combined generated over $56 billion in sales for the company.

The year “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,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer.

“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.”

Sales of Comirnaty and Paxlovid are expected to hit their lowest levels in 2023 before getting back to growth next year “due to significant government supply on hand” at the beginning of this year, the company said.

Pfizer calculates Comirnaty sales to decline by 64 percent, to $13.5 billion this year, and Paxlovid sales to drop 58 percent, to $8 billion.

Mutating Virus, Quadrupling Vaccine Price

Pfizer’s results come as the company is under scrutiny following an investigative report which revealed that the firm is considering mutating the COVID-19 virus for developing new vaccines against it.

“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it ourselves so we could create—preemptively develop new vaccines, right?” Dr. Jordon Walker, a director of research and development at Pfizer, told an undercover reporter for Project Veritas.

“If we’re going to do that, though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine—no one wants to be having a pharmaceutical company mutating [expletive] viruses.” Walker insisted that COVID-19 is going to be “a cash cow for us for a while going forward.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has called on Congress to investigate the COVID-19 vaccine-approval process. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Bourla asking for more information about Pfizer’s efforts to mutate the COVID-19 virus.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is expected to start selling the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine through commercial channels in the United States from the second half of this year, moving away from its earlier practice of selling to the government. The firm intends to raise the price of the vaccine by around four times sometime in 2023.

Lack of Vaccine Data, European Parliament Ban

While Pfizer is pushing for greater use of COVID-19 vaccines, a growing number of doctors are deciding against getting the booster jabs owing to a lack of clinical trial evidence.

“I have taken my last COVID vaccine without RCT level evidence,” Dr. Todd Lee, an infectious disease expert at McGill University, recently wrote on Twitter. He was pointing to a lack of randomized clinical trials (RCT) for the booster vaccines.

“Pay close attention to note this isn’t anti-vaccine sentiment. This is ‘provide [hard] evidence of benefit to justify ongoing use’ which is very different. It is only fair for a $30 billion a year product given to hundreds of millions,” Lee, who has received three vaccine doses, stated.

Meanwhile, Pfizer officials are facing a potential ban from the European Parliament due to the company’s lack of transparency regarding COVID-19 vaccine purchase agreements during the pandemic.

On Jan. 11, the European Parliament’s committee on COVID approved the ban proposal. All political groups voted for the ban except for two parties.