After Pfizer (PFE) posted a third quarter earnings beat and raised its full-year guidance, CEO Albert Bourla joins Market Domination to discuss the "exceptional quarter." Bourla notes that Pfizer in addition to earnings and revenue, the company's COVID and non-COVID businesses also topped expectations. He tells Yahoo Finance, "When you have a quarter like that, really you feel that you are in a good way of executing what you said you will do." While there have been questions about the sustainability of Pfizer's COVID business, Bourla explains, "It's clear to me that the COVID business has stab...
8:15Going back to that comment on mega blockbusters, I wonder, is that the strategy or are you looking for something that's more a bigger basket of smaller wins per se?
Pfizer lifting its full year guidance by $1.5 billion as it posts strong third quarter earnings. This quarter, the company focusing on its pipeline progress and growth prospects. Here with me now to discuss all of that and more is Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Albert, really good to see you again. Really strong quarter, you beat Wall Street estimates, you raised guidance $1.5 billion for the year for 2024. This is really the story of a comeback this quarter. Talk to me about that. We did see the stock jump on the earnings release, but then it sort of pulled back a little bit. So talk to me about this quarter and what you see as the story for the quarter.
Look, it was a very exceptional quarter. Very few times you have the opportunity to beat across the board. We beat on top line by 20%, almost 18%, and we beat the bottom line by 70%. And we beat on COVID business and we beat on non-COVID business that had a phenomenal growth of 14% the non-COVID business. But also, even more importantly, we beat almost on all new products. So of course we beat on Paxlovid and Comirnaty, but also we beat on Prevnar 20, also we beat on RSV, we beat on NURTEC, which is the product that we acquired from Biohaven. The two new JAK inhibitors that we launched, Cibinqo and Lulo, we beat on both of them. Oncology, the new product that we had launched was Adcetris, we beat also on that. So when you have a quarter like that, really you feel that you are in a good way of executing what you said you will do.
Absolutely. I know Paxlovid has been the focus, I think in part because of the surprise element, considering the COVID wave we saw and how much of a boost they saw, considering we've been thinking that the COVID portfolio will just sort of wane out. But you repeated during the call today that you see it as sort of ongoing stable business. The numbers match last year, you're on track to be on par with last year. Talk to me about how you see that, as well as some of the Seagen acquisition drugs and the sort of boost that they've given the bottom line to your portfolio this earnings quarter.
Oh, first of all, it's clear to me that the COVID business has stabilized into the new levels that will be the sustainable levels for the future. We are having already a second year of repetition, and it is identical the numbers of utilization, it is identical the numbers of wastewater virus load which we are measuring to see how the disease is progressing, and one actually it is highly correlated with the other, and they are the same in 23 and 24. The same is with Comirnaty, the volumes are very, very similar. So COVID is a stable business. Seagen has done exceptionally well. It's not only operational that we have an integration but was very, very good, but the revenues of Seagen are way higher than what we forecasted and what the market had forecasted in the beginning of the year, not to say that we had forecast it when we announced the acquisition because in the meantime we had significant readouts. So the four marketed products are doing exceptionally well. However, what excites us more in Seagen is the pipeline, because it's giving us a new platform, a technological platform that the majority of scientific and investor community believe it's transformational for cancer: ADCs. That's why a lot of ADCs are sold in extremely high prices right now. With that one, we just announced three Phase 3 new ADCs that are going to Phase 3. One is already there and it is for lung cancer, it's called SKB264. The other is a PD-L1 ADC that we are about to start Phase 3 study. Those two, if they are successful, they are not going to be big products, they are going to be mega blockbusters because they are in lung and they are projected to have very high efficacy if they are successful. We are also launching a CDK4 which is for breast cancer that is not coming from Seagen, it's coming from the Pfizer pipeline, but I just wanted also to mention it. From Seagen, another Phase 3 that we are starting it is an ADC for urothelial cancer. And I'm talking only about the Phase 3 because we have in earlier phases so many new products in their pipeline that we will have a new Phase 3 coming forward. So for us, Seagen is a transformational deal for Pfizer that will propel us to become leaders in oncology.
5 more exchanges in this transcript
Sign in free to read the rest of this interview. No card required.
