Pfizer stock closed flat Tuesday after its sales missed Wall Street's third-quarter sales forecasts and on mixed results for its messenger RNA-based flu shot.
The sales shortfall was due mainly to weak sales of Covid products Comirnaty and Paxlovid. Revenue from the vaccine and antiviral pill pushed Pfizer's total sales down 41% on an operational basis. Excluding those two products, sales jumped 10% operationally.
Citeline analyst Zhyar Said noted Pfizer's new respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, Abrysvo, and pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar 20 beat expectations.
"Pfizer is looking to counteract this loss in their vaccine market by focusing on new launches including Abrysvo and Prevnar 20," he said in an email to Investor's Business Daily. "Though these two products have already driven Pfizer's non-Covid product sales by 10%, this margin was not enough to make up for the 41% drop (due to) Covid sales."
Pfizer Stock: Sales Come In Light
On the stock market, Pfizer stock closed with a fractional gain, at 30.56.
Overall, Pfizer lost an adjusted 17 cents per share on $13.23 billion in sales. Sales tumbled 42% on a strict, as-reported basis. Losses swung from a year-earlier gain of $1.78 per share.
Sales lagged expectations for $13.34 billion, according to FactSet. But analysts had varying calls for losses. FactSet-polled analysts called for a smaller loss of 8 cents per share. Other analysts expected losses ranging from 23 cents to 33 cents, according to reports.
Comirnaty sales plummeted 70% to $1.31 billion and missed calls for $1.53 billion. Paxlovid sales "all but disappeared," Third Bridge analyst Lee Brown said in a report. Sales of the antiviral pill fell 97% to $202 million. Analysts projected $613.5 million in Paxlovid sales.
"Both drugs meaningfully underperformed already tempered expectations," Brown said.
More promisingly, Abrysvo generated $375 million. Abrysvo gained approval in May for adults ages 60 and older. It competes against GSK's Arexvy, which won Food and Drug Administration approval a few weeks before Abrysvo.
Analysts expected just $78 million in Abrysvo sales, Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said in a report. He has a market perform rating on Pfizer stock.
Also on the vaccine front, sales of Prevnar pneumococcal vaccines jumped 15% to $1.85 billion. That beat forecasts for $1.73 billion, Third Bridge's Brown said.
On the flip side, revenue from blood thinner Eliquis missed expectations, climbing just 2% on an as-reported basis to nearly $1.5 billion. That was "well short of consensus" estimates for $1.56 billion, Brown said. He noted Eliquis is soon to lose patent protection and will be subject to Medicare price negotiations. So, "the outlook for Eliquis is challenged."
Mixed Results For Flu Shot
Pfizer also posted mixed results for its messenger RNA-based flu shot. The vaccine met the study's immunogenicity goals for A strains, but not B strains. That's similar to Moderna's early efforts to make an mRNA-based flu shot.
Now, Pfizer is guiding to launching its flu shot in 2025, vs. prior expectations for 2024, Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat said in a report.
Pfizer is now reformulating the flu shot to yield more robust responses to B strain influenzas.
Raffat kept his outperform rating on Pfizer stock.
For the year, Pfizer reaffirmed the guidance it gave earlier this month for adjusted earnings of $1.45 to $1.65 per share and $58 billion to $61 billion in sales. The guidance includes $11.5 billion in sales of Covid vaccine Comirnaty, down 70%, and $1 billion from antiviral pill Paxlovid, a decline of 95%.
Pfizer stock analysts called for earnings of $2.13 per share and $60.68 billion in sales.
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