Pfizer’s third-quarter financial report fell short of Wall Street expectations Tuesday morning, a few weeks after the company sharply cut sales forecasts for its Covid-19 products.
Pfizer (ticker: PFE) reported an adjusted diluted loss of 17 cents per share on revenue of $13.2 billion in the third quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting Pfizer to report a loss of 8 cents a share on revenue of $13.3 billion.
Pfizer said its narrowed loss per share was “heavily impacted” by a $5.6 billion non-cash inventory charge, mostly due to underutilized covid-19 antiviral paxlovide.
The company said its $43 billion plan to buy cancer-focused biotech SGEN ( SGEN ) is “progressing well” and that the deal is expected to close late this year or early next.
Shares of Pfizer were down 0.2 percent on Tuesday. The company’s report comes after a dismal week for its pharma peers, which saw shares of the long-listed drugmaker fall sharply after its peers released their quarterly earnings reports.
talk with Baron On Tuesday afternoon, Pfizer CEO Albert Borla said doubts surrounding the company’s Covid-19 business had been removed and that non-Covid business was strong. “I think the prospects are very good,” he said. “I expect investors will see that soon.”
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Pfizer’s revenue fell 42 percent from the same quarter last year, but the company reported a 10 percent increase in sales of its non-Covid products at work. CFO David Denton said in a statement that the company is “on track” to meet its full-year non-Covid operating income target of 6 percent to 8 percent.
We are encouraged by CEO Albert Burla’s strong year-over-year growth with significant contributions from new startups in the third quarter of 2023. Release of earnings.
Sales of Komirnet, the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, were $1.3 billion in the quarter, slightly below the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of $1.5 billion. Paxlovide’s sales were $202 million. In mid-October, Pfizer returned one-third of the doses of paxolovide that the US government had bought from the company, and in 2018 It lowered its guidance for Paxlovide sales in 2023 to $1 billion from $8 billion.
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Burella said. Baron In the year Between 2023 and 2024, the Covid-19 vaccination rate is expected to remain stable at around 17 percent of the US population. “Now it’s people who really believe in the value of vaccines that are getting the vaccine,” he said. “It will be the foundation.”
Pfizer said sales of its new respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, Abrisvo, were $375 million in the third quarter. Sales of Nurtech ODT/Vidura for the quarter, which the company achieved at the end of last year, were $233 million.
Pfizer reaffirmed its fiscal 2023 revenue and earnings guidance provided earlier this month.
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The company also reported new data Tuesday on its messenger RNA-based influenza vaccine, which it tested in a Phase 3 trial in adults ages 18 to 64. approved influenza vaccine, and this safety was “equal”.
Last week, the company reported positive results from trials of an mRNA-based vaccine that protects against the flu and Covid-19.
“Overall, flu mRNA was very well tolerated,” said Michael Dolston, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer. Baron on Tuesday. “I don’t think it’s more difficult for people to shoot one shot than two.”
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Pfizer shares are down roughly 40% this year ahead of the earnings announcement, hitting a new 52-week low on Friday. Management is looking to attract investors amid an unusually busy few months of product launches, including Abirisvone, an ulcerative colitis pill and a meningitis vaccine, among others.
But investors are still focused on the company’s declining Covid-19 earnings.
In mid-October, Pfizer admitted that initial forecasts for 2023 Covid-19 sales were too optimistic, as it announced a major cost-cutting program. Also in mid-October, Pfizer cut its full-year profit forecast, saying it now expects adjusted 2023 earnings between $1.45 and $1.65 a share. That represents a loss in the second half because adjusted deposit income was $1.90 in the first half of the year.
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Pfizer maintained that mid-October guidance on Tuesday. “Our product portfolio is strong,” Denton said in comments prepared for an investor call Tuesday morning. “We expect our cost improvement program to improve our operating margins, enhancing long-term shareholder value.”
Denton said. Baron The company’s cost-cutting programs were “underway.”
“We have a team around,” he said. “We’ve got a line of sight of about a billion dollars this year and two and a half next year, and we’re working hard on that.”
Pfizer’s stock fell nearly 10% after the new forecasts were revealed, although it rose 1.2% on October 16, the trading day after the announcement.
The company did not provide any updates on Pfizer’s 2b trial of danuglipron, Pfizer’s oral obesity pill, which could compete with Eli Lilly.
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(LLY) experimental obesity pill orfoglipron. Positive data could allow Pfizer to play in the GLP-1 space, which Lilly and Novo Nordisk ( NVO ) have so far dominated. While some analysts expected new danuglipron data on Tuesday, none came.
“All market research indicates that a very large portion of the population doesn’t want a needle, they want a pill,” Burella said. Baron. The information is currently “not ready,” he said.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]