Pfizer reports first quarterly loss since 2019
By Angel Smith and Anjalee KhemlaniOctober 31, 2023, 11:38 am
Shares of Pfizer (PFE) slipped after the pharmaceutical company reported its first quarterly loss since 2019. In the third quarter, Pfizer incurred a $5.6 billion non-cash write-off due to declining demand for its COVID-19 products as the pandemic wanes.
Yahoo Finance's health reporter Anjalee Khemlani explores how Pfizer aims to offset revenue losses from waning COVID-19 product demand through new vaccine approvals and portfolio expansions.
Video (click below link)
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Top names including Pfizer (PFE), Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), Caterpillar (CAT), and JetBlue (JBLU) all reported earnings before the bell today. Wall Street’s focus will be elsewhere though as the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting on interest rates kicks off in Washington, D.C. Yahoo Finance...Video Transcript (of the above)
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DIANE KING HALL: Navigating the post-pandemic world is difficult, even for pharmaceutical leader, Pfizer. Shares under pressure this morning after the company released its third quarter report. Pfizer posted its first quarterly loss since 2019 on weaker demand for its COVID-related products. Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani has the breakdown for us. Good morning, Anje.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Good morning. Yeah. Unfortunately, Pfizer seeing a bit of that weakening demand for its products, including the vaccine and Paxlovid. That latter one, the treatment for COVID, we saw that change in what the company was going to be doing with the-- with the US government agreement.
Shifting to that commercial market, they've had a $5.5 billion non-cash write-off there and they're going to be using some of the funds there from that agreement to support access for patients moving forward with a government-sponsored program.
Meanwhile, there's also promising news for their RSV vaccine, the one that just got approval and on the market already, 375 million there. Got some approvals of other vaccine-- other products, other indications that have come up. There are meningococcal in adolescents, for example, vaccine. Getting that approval, as well as strong reports of their pneumococcal vaccine. So that that portfolio doing really well.
Meanwhile, they're still looking at two other near-term launches waiting on an FDA decision for one of their prostate cancer drugs, as well as the mRNA flu vaccine. And then there's, of course, that Seagen approval from the FTC pending. They're waiting for that to close late 2023, early 2024. They already got the green light from the EU, so waiting on that.
So that's sort of the full picture. As you can see, it's still sort of recovering from its COVID days, if you will, that huge jump that they saw, of course, from the vaccine being the dominant player in the market, and now having to sort of rightsize operations to focus on the rest of the company's portfolio. And that small ding from Q3 from that shift to the commercial market is what you're seeing right there. So we'll wait to see they did reaffirm guidance for the rest of the year. So we'll see how that pans out for the company.
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