A slap in the Pface: Pfizer chief boasts to investor that Covid will continue to be a 'multi-billion dollar franchise for many years to come' - as firm prepares to stick 10,000% markup on its vaccine
Pfizer’s chief financial officer has described the Covid pandemic as a 'multi-billion dollar franchise' — and expects profit to continue.
David Denton told investors in an earnings call last week his company's vaccine and antiviral would still be 'relevant for many years to come'.
The CFO said he expects the Covid virus to be 'somewhat like a flu... but more deadly' — meaning therapeutics will still have a massive role in controlling the virus.
So far Pfizer reaped about $80 billion in yearly revenue from sales of Covid vaccines and the antiviral drug Paxlovid.
The company announced last month it will triple the price of its shot to up to $130 per dose next year — a far cry from the roughly $19 to $30 per dose that the government paid.
Some experts estimate each individual shot to cost just $1.18 to make — meaning the new price represents a 10,000 per cent markup.
Analysts speculate that the move was made so Pfizer could still meet its target of $32 billion of projected vaccine revenue this year.
Critics say that the decision shows the firm's greed. Peter Maybarduk, director of access to medicines at Public Citizen, told DailyMail.com that the firm was already in a good of financial position that they could take some loss.
Maybarduk also said that the firm has already made an 'obscene' amount of money, and will be ok if they do not meet revenue projections that were likely inflated anyways.
Pfizer was an early winner during the pandemic when it became the first company to get a Covid-19 vaccine approved for the US market. Subsequent vaccine mandates for healthcare workers and the military further drove up sales of vaccines.
The company projects $102 billion in total revenue this year with the vaccine and its antiviral Paxlovid - more than double the company's yearly revenue in 2019 ($40.9 billion) and 2020 ($41.7 billion).
Julia Kosgei, policy advisor to the The People's Vaccine Alliance said: 'Experts have estimated that Pfizer's vaccine costs just $1.18 per dose to make... Charging $130 per dose would represent a markup of more than ten thousand per cent. This is daylight robbery.'
'Governments must not stand by while companies like Pfizer hold the world to ransom in a global pandemic,' she added.
Contracts signed by the government to secure billions of doses of vaccines at no cost to Americans will run out soon, shifting the cost of purchasing shots to health insurance companies.
Pfizer CFO David Denton told investors: ‘I think if you look out longer term, the franchise is going to be a multibillion-dollar franchise in the respect that this is going to be somewhat like a flu, sustained flu, but actually more deadly than the flu.
‘I think the products, both from a vaccine and the therapy perspective that Pfizer has developed, are going to be quite relevant for many years to come,’ he said.

Pfizer is charging $130 for its COVID-19 vaccine - a 10,000% mark-up from the estimated $1.18 it costs them to develop a single dose of the vaccine. The firm was charging the US government around $20 per shot but rose prices in an effort to make up for poor demand for the jabs. It is forecasted to rake in over $100billion in revenue this year, and brought in $81.2billion last year. These figures well clear the $40billion per year it was earning the years prior. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has earned $50million in compensation over the past two years, while BioNTech found Dr Ugar Sahin is now a billionaire.

The mRNA vaccine, developed with Germany-based BioNTech, will soon become pricier for people without health insurance as government contracts that made the shots free for all Americans are slated to expire

Pfizer has raked in $100 billion from selling Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to the US and foreign governments. The vaccine alone garnered global revenue exceeding $36 billion in 2021

Pfizer CFO touted the company's high earnings and told investors that Covid will continue to garner billions of dollars for the company in the coming years as the virus becomes more like a seasonal flu