Pfizer lifts profit view as cuts offset flat sales outlook

Company rebuilding following decline in demand for its covid products, slashing about €6.2bn from its spending and focusing on pipeline of new medicines

Sales of Pfizer's vaccine and pill for covid came in well above estimates. Demand for those products has precipitously declined since 2022. Picture: Eamonn Farrell / © RollingNews.ie

Pfizer raised its profit forecast for the year, with the drugmaker’s ongoing cost cuts helping to make up for a lack of expected sales growth.

It follows a decline in demand for the company’s covid products, which forced the drugmaker to reshape its business.

Adjusted profits will be between $2.90 to $3.10 per share in 2025, the New York-based company said in a statement, an increase of 10 cents per share over its prior projection. 

The company maintained its sales expectations of $61bn (€52.8bn) to $64bn (€55.4bn), the midpoint of which would represent a decline in sales from 2024.

Pfizer is in the process of rebuilding in the aftermath of the pandemic, slashing about $7.2bn (€6.2bn) from its spending and betting on an unproven pipeline of new medicines to make up for the stagnant sales of its ageing products.

The company attributed its profit boost to the ongoing cost cuts, the effects of the weakening dollar, and an improvement in its tax rate.

Pfizer said its new guidance accounted for existing tariffs on imports from China, Canada and Mexico. The company has also factored in “potential price changes this year” after US president Donald Trump’s recent demand that drugmakers put US prices on par with what they charge other wealthy nations.

The company’s second-quarter sales were $14.7bn, beating average estimates by more than $1bn. Pfizer’s biggest drug, the more than decade-old blood thinner Eliquis, surpassed expectations and the pneumonia vaccine Prevnar beat the Street’s view.

Sales of the company’s vaccine and pill for covid came in well above estimates. Demand for those products has precipitously declined since 2022.

Pfizer faces a roughly $15bn (€13bn) patent cliff by the end of the decade, and investors remain sceptical its pipeline of new medicines can eventually replace the lost revenue. 

The recent failure of Pfizer’s weight-loss pill, the company’s best shot at competing with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in the burgeoning obesity market, only amplified the pressure on management.

Meanwhile, the company faces escalating threats from Washington.

Trump’s promise to impose tariffs on medicines imported from overseas would penalise Pfizer’s reliance on a global network of manufacturing sites to supply its drugs. Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla was also one of 17 executives to receive a personal letter from the president, detailing his demand for lower drug prices.

Trump’s health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jnr, has raised doubts about the safety of vaccines, creating risks for Pfizer, which counts on its shots for covid, RSV, and pneumonia for nearly 20% of sales.