Pfizer and Moderna to achieve US$93 billion in sales and record profits with Covid vaccines by 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A report from data analytics firm Airfinity forecasts “record sales” and profits for Pfizer and Moderna in 2022, with the companies pricing their vaccines up to US$41 billion above estimated production costs, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

Vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna are expected to have combined sales of US$93.2 billion in 2022, nearly double this year’s total, according to Airfinity, a health data analytics firm.

Airfinity puts total Covid vaccine sales in 2022 at US$124 billion, according to the Financial Times.

Pfizer’s 2022 vaccine sales are estimated at US$54.5 billion and Moderna’s at US$38.7 billion. The estimates far exceed previous figures of $23.6 billion for Pfizer and US$20 billion for Moderna. “The numbers are unprecedented,” Rasmus Beck Hansen, managing director of Airfinity, told the Financial Times.

According to Airfinity, sales of mRNA injections will continue to increase in 2022 due to booster doses and country bookings for “variant prevention.” According to analysts, Pfizer will generate 64% of its sales and 75% of its sales in high-income countries by 2022.

In April, Pfizer forecast Covid vaccine sales of US$26 billion in 2021. After releasing its second-quarter results, Pfizer raised the figure to US$33.5 billion. Ronny Gal, an analyst at Bernstein, said the company could see an additional US$10 billion in vaccine sales in 2021.

“The second quarter was exceptional in many ways,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive officer. “The speed and efficiency of our efforts with BioNTech to vaccinate the world against Covid-19 were unprecedented, with more than one billion doses of BNT162b2 administered worldwide.”

In a conference call, Bourla said that while it was too early to talk about its sales expectations for next year, he estimated Pfizer’s 2022 production capacity at 4 billion doses.

ASTRONOMICAL PROFITS

According to ActionAid International, a global association working for a world free of poverty and injustice, Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech are making “astronomical and outrageous profits” from their monopolies on Covid mRNA vaccines.

Moderna and BioNTech have profit margins of 69% and pay very little in taxes, the People’s Vaccine Alliance said on September 15.

Thanks to patent monopolies on Covid vaccines, whose development was supported by US$100 billion in public money from taxpayers in the U.S., Germany, and other countries, the three corporations generated more than US$26 billion in revenue in the first half of the year.

The alliance also estimates that the three corporations overcharge for their vaccines by as much as US$41 billion over estimated production costs.

“Big Pharma’s business model is gold for wealthy investors and corporate CEOs, but devastating for global public health,” said Robbie Silverman, private sector engagement manager at Oxfam.

Silverman said pharmaceutical companies put their profits first by enforcing their monopolies and selling their vaccines to the highest bidder. “Enough is enough, we need to start putting people before profits,” Silverman said.

According to an analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, based on work by mRNA scientists at Imperial College, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have charged up to 24 times the potential cost of producing their vaccines.

An analysis of production techniques for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, developed with US$8.3 billion in public funding alone, suggests that the same vaccines could be produced for as little as US$1.20 per dose. Pfizer’s contract price for the vaccine in Brazil was US$10 per dose, reputedly one of the lowest in the world.