(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said Tuesday it expects to generate $ 15 billion, or about a quarter of its total revenue this year, from the sale of its COVID-19 vaccine co-developed by the German partner BioNTech SE.
Sales from the vaccine – on track to become the drug dealer ‘s main product this year – could go up to $ 15 billion if the company signs more supply contracts, he said.
Pfizer aims to produce two billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview that the company wanted to remain a target and is working on several initiatives to to exceed that result.
“We have increased the batches we run each week, we have doubled the yield – the yield per batch – we have significantly improved our success rates, we have improved process on the collection lines, ”Chief Financial Officer Frank D Amelio said in the interview.
“All of these things are things we continue to explore to see what else we can do to try to make more doses faster,” he said.
Pfizer also said it anticipates that there may be a lasting need for COVID-19 vaccines, to combat emerging viral changes and to stimulate human immune responses.
The company is launching a study to see if the third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, administered 6-to-12 months after the first pictures, can extend efficacy and improve with more infectious modifications. which circulates in communities around the world. The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is currently administered in two doses three weeks apart.
Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said that he believes that mRNA vaccines like Pfizer generate a strong enough immune response to reverse the changes currently circulating, and that an increase , rather than a reconstituted vaccine, the right way for now.
Citi analyst Andrew Baum said he was optimistic that revenue donations from the vaccine could be stable beyond 2021.
Pfizer plans to deliver 200 million doses to the U.S. government by the end of May.
To achieve the goal, it needs to deliver an average of about 10 million doses per week, more than double the level of Pfizer and BioNTech delivered to the United States through the end of January, according to Reuters calculations.
The vaccine, which uses a synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) to stimulate an immune response against the virus, was the first image approved for emergency use in the United States. marking the first management node for the new technology.
The mRNA and COVID-19 vaccines could be transformative for Pfizer, which is already one of the world’s largest drug dealers, CEO Bourla said. A potential technology-based flu vaccine could hit the market by 2025, officials said in a conference call.
Pfizer was forecasting 2021 sales between $ 59.4 billion and $ 61.4 billion. The company raised each end of the full-year adjusted profit forecast by 10 cents and now plans to earn $ 3.10 to $ 3.20 per share.
Reporting with Manas Mishra in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in Maplewood, NJ; Edited by Arun Koyyur and Bill Berkrot