The Pit
news blog
Pfizer 2021 Comirnaty Revenue $36.8 Billion; Q4 Report
by Travis Ruhland - March 3, 2022
Links
- Pfizer Q4/2021 Earnings Report – https://s28.q4cdn.com/781576035/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/Q4-2021-PFE-Earnings-Release.pdf
- CNBC Pfizer Earnings Summary – Covid: Pfizer (PFE) earnings report for the fourth quarter, 2021 (cnbc.com)
- Pfizer 6-Year Revenue Chart & 2022 Projection • Chart: Pfizer Revenue Boosted by Covid-19 Drugs | Statista
- BARDA Funding – MedicalCountermeasures.gov – Coronavirus COVID-19
- 2021 Congressional Summary of Government COVID Funding – Operation Warp Speed Contracts for COVID 19 Vaccines and Ancillary Vaccination Materials (congress.gov)
- US Taxpayers Heavily Funded the Discovery of COVID‐19 Vaccines (nih.gov)
- Pfizer says it didn’t take government money – Pfizer’s Early Data Shows Coronavirus Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
- Pfizer CEO Bourla Refuses Government Money – Pfizer CEO: Company refused taxpayer money for COVID-19 vaccine development to ‘liberate our scientists’ (yahoo.com)
Pfizer’s 2021 Q4 Earnings Report is out. For 2021 they earned $81.3 billion in gross revenue, which was a 95% increase from 2020 earnings of $41.7 billion. And what fueled this incredible jump in revenue? Well, Comirnaty – its COVID-19 vaccine, which secured $36.8 billion dollars for the pharmaceutical behemoth in 2021.
In 2022 Pfizer projects even greater earnings – between $98 billion and $102 billion
Now, there are a many different ways to take this information, but it’s likely this divided nation will view it from two completely opposite vantage points. One, Pfizer took on risk and developed a safe and effective vaccine that saved lives and will continue to save more lives and maybe even one day end the pandemic, so they deserve to make as much money as they can off of it. Or two, that the technology and research that contributed to the development of the vaccine was paid for mostly by German and US governments, meaning taxpayers footed a significant portion of the bill, and that it is absurd that Pfizer should be raking in as much money as it is.
Both arguments are valid.
From the beginning, Pfizer’s executives claimed that they did not take any government money from Operation Warp Speed (a partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, which included collaboration with the CDC, NIH, and BARDA).
However, that’s not entirely true. Or as unbiased Fact-Checkers might claim – Mostly False. In July 21, 2020, Pfizer entered into an agreement with the DHHS and DoD that promised the drug company $1.95 billion for 100 million doses. They then agreed to an additional $2 billion on December 22, 2020 and another $2 billion on February 11, 2021 for more doses. And Pfizer’s partner BioNTech received nearly $500 million from the German government.
Use of language is important here. Pfizer claimed it didn’t take any money for Research and Development, that all of the money they did receive was for doses of vaccine. Nevertheless, they did receive billions of US and global taxpayer dollars. And not to mention the public-funded research and developed technologies that existed before the pandemic that aided in the COVID vaccine development.
But that’s how medicine works in our nation and much of the world. Costs are nationalized and profits are privatized. In my book I point out that every single medicine developed in the past many years was at least partially funded by taxpayer dollars:
“Currently, the US government spends around $150 billion a year on R&D, and as of 2013, universities, which are given $40 billion in federal funds annually, were responsible for 56% of basic research in the country… Private firms then take the baton into the phases of late stage development or applied research, create new products or mass produce existing technology, and then reap the tremendous financial rewards in the marketplace.
…In 2018 the Center for Integration of Science and Industry published a study analyzing financing of each of the 210 drugs approved between 2010 and 2016. What they discovered was, the research behind every single drug approved during that 7-year span was associated, to varying degrees, with federal dollars… All 210 drugs received some sort of financial support out of the $100 billion invested by the National Institute of Health during that time period. And of course, the companies benefitting from the “free” research get to turn around, mark up drug prices, and procure magnificent profits.”
But what do you think? Does Pfizer’s exorbitant revenue numbers, mainly from its COVID vaccine, strike a nerve? Does something feel off about a company making bank off of a pandemic, especially considering how much tax dollars and tax-funded research and technology went into the vaccine’s development? Or do you applaud their efforts and feel their influx of cash is well-deserved?
To learn more, feel free to check out my book – The Pit: Transcend Money, Save the World.