Pfizer sees 'opportunity' to hike price for COVID vaccine
By: Noah Manskar (New York Post)
Never let a crisis go to waste. Now begins the pharma lobbying of the CDC and FDA to recommend annual vaccination boosters just like flu shots.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Pfizer is looking to turn its lucrative coronavirus vaccine into an even bigger cash cow.
The drugmaker sees a "significant opportunity" to charge more for the groundbreaking shot once it gets to the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, one top executive says.
Pfizer set the current prices for the vaccine it developed with its German partner, BioNTech, based on the need for governments to secure doses and get the virus under control, according to chief financial officer Frank D'Amelio.
For instance, Pfizer is charging the US government $19.50 per dose — well below the $150 or $175 per dose it typically pulls in for a vaccine, D'Amelio said on the company's February earnings call.
But "normal market conditions will start to kick in" as the global pandemic shifts into an endemic, D'Amelio said last week.
He suggested that those less-urgent conditions could play to Pfizer's advantage given that its shot is 95 percent effective, the highest rate among the three vaccines currently cleared for use in the US.
Healthcare workers prepare doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine Manning High School in Manning, South Carolina.Micah Green/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"Factors like efficacy, booster ability, clinical utility will basically become very important, and we view that as, quite frankly, a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a pricing perspective, given the clinical profile of our vaccine," D'Amelio said Thursday during the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference.
But Pfizer said it expects governments will be the primary buyers of its vaccine as the pandemic drags on into 2022, during which time it expects to keep prices low.
"We recognize the urgent need for people all over the world to receive this vaccine and have accordingly set the price of our vaccine for the pandemic period to encourage broad access, rather than using traditional value-based pricing frameworks," Pfizer spokesperson Faith Salamon told The Post in an email.
The Manhattan-based pharma giant already expects to rake in about $15 billion in sales this year from the two-dose COVID vaccine with a profit margin of more than 20 percent of the shot's total revenues.
Those profits could get even larger once Pfizer gets out of the "pandemic-pricing environment," D'Amelio told investors last month.
"Obviously, we're going to get more on price," he said on Pfizer's earnings call. "And clearly … the more volume we put through our factories, the lower unit cost will become."
Pfizer also thinks it's "becoming increasingly likely" that people will need an annual booster shot to ward off the COVID-19 variants that have emerged around the world, according to D'Amelio.
Pfizer has launched a study of a third vaccine dose to address the variants.
"We don't see this as a onetime event, but we see this as something that's going to continue for the foreseeable future," D'Amelio said.
Pfizer shares climbed about 0.9 percent to $35.72 as of 2:16 p.m.
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Pandemics for fun and profit. Don't worry, Democrats will raise the corporate tax rate so the Federal government will get its share. And Democrats will hand out tax loopholes to buy political donations, too.
See, we have already returned to normal.
It's my understanding that the federal government is paying for all the vaccines in the US anyway. Am I mistaken Nerm? I say they should stop buying Pfizer and just buy Moderna and J+J from now on.
Too late for that. The Federal government has already made the commitment.
Haven't you wondered why Pfizer and Moderna require two doses? A single dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are comparably efficacious to a single dose of the J&J vaccine. Seems like there might be a perception of collusion between the pharma companies and the Federal bureaucracy.
Pandemics for fun and profit.
Pfizer gets $39 for every person that is fully vaccinated. The vaccines are not free; the government doesn't have a magic money tree.
One argument is that Pfizer should be taxed more. But taxing Pfizer more won't make the vaccines cheaper. The money to pay those higher taxes has to come from sale of the vaccine (and other Pfizer products). Higher taxes only gives Pfizer an excuse to raise prices and become the tax collector for the Federal government.
What the seed article highlights is how pharma exploits consumers to make bigger profits and enrich corporate management. Taxes won't fix that. The only way to address pharma's monopolistic exploitation is with price controls using strengthened racketeering and RICO laws.
Capitalism.
True, but we can get even more essential. This is basic economics: supply and demand. It has existed for all of human society history in simple, ancient bartering within market feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism and likely in whatever might come next (socialism, if next, is based on supply and demand as well).
I thought you were pro capitalism.
But still not get it up to a decent rate.
Except Democrats are currently looking at removing a bunch of loopholes that the Trump taxcuts installed.
Yup, Republicans projecting again.
What the seed highlights is mercantile exploitation that isn't any different than colonial and imperial mercantile exploitation 400 years ago. That's European capitalism; not American capitalism.
Just pure unregulated capitalism. You ARE against regulations, right?
Europe hasn't fixed capitalism with regulation or taxes.
What we need is stronger racketeering and RICO laws.
Who the fuck is talking about Europe???
Why have you completely changed the subject instead of answering a simple question? Are you trying to avoid answering the question?
I am in @1.3.1. Where do you think exploitation under the guise of capitalism started?
I did directly answer your question by pointing out we need stronger racketeering and RICO laws. Make the people doing the exploitation accountable.
I am not sorry that doesn't fit the left's political talking points.
Is someone else whispering questions in your ear? Since that has nothing to do with my question.
Could you be responding to someone else's comments by mistake?
Been there, done that too many times.
Well of course it is. Pfizer is in business to raise shareholder equity and consume market share. They will of course attempt to get the highest return on their investment. Not admirable, but who thinks big business is anything but a machine driven by the dynamics of our capitalist economies.
Protecting shareholder equity is a euphemism for the corporate management team to make themselves richer by increasing value of non-public shares. Raising shareholder equity really doesn't have anything to do with publicly traded shares beyond exploiting consumption in the public market.
Even at $19.50 a dose, developing the vaccine and setting up manufacturing hasn't cost Pfizer anything. Pfizer is getting $2 billion for 100 million doses and that only fully vaccinates 50 million people. Pfizer is actually getting $39 for each person that is fully vaccinated. The government commitments for vaccines has made the pandemic a freebie for Pfizer because the government doesn't have an option to not vaccinate.
Use whatever phrase you want Nerm. My point was clearly stated and you want to argue choice of language. Deflection rejected. My point: Pfizer will of course do what is best for Pfizer. There, I dropped down to elementary school language to mitigate more semantics games.
This is a non sequitur. You should already know my position is that Pfizer is in this for the money. And that this is what one would expect.