Until recently, Pfizer was perhaps best known as the maker of Viagra. Then the pandemic happened, and the NYC-based pharma giant was taken a lot more seriously thanks to the Covid vaccine it produced in partnership with BioNTech.
That vaccine, which marshals cutting-edge mRNA technology, proved to be highly effective against Covid, saving countless lives and paving the way for a rapid global economic recovery.
- Against the Omicron variant, however, a two-shot regiment of Pfizer's vaccine offers only reduced protection. Adding a third booster shot restores effectiveness, according to a study from Pfizer and BioNTech.
But more shots = more sales, and Pfizer's had plenty of those. The company expects to bring in $36 billion in revenue from its vaccine this year, which would put it among the top-selling drugs of all time. Thanks to its effectiveness, negligible side effects, and its ability to be produced in mass quantities, Pfizer's vaccine has beaten out Moderna's, J&J's, AstraZeneca's, and others as the "world's preferred shot," the WSJ writes.
As Pfizer's profile has grown, so has the influence of CEO Albert Bourla. During the pandemic, the Greek-born veterinarian and longtime company exec has counseled leaders across the globe, even becoming a "good friend" of the US president, as Joe Biden asserted. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Bourla 30 times in the run-up to the country's election, according to the FT.
Pfizer has plenty of critics, though, who say it has not done nearly enough to send vaccines to lower-income countries, where immunization rates are far lower than in higher-income nations. Leaders in Africa have accused the company of playing "hardball" and making "unreasonable demands" in terms of the legal concessions it required of governments there during contract negotiations.
Pfizer claims vaccine inequity isn't its fault: "The low- and middle-income countries will be behind in deliveries because they didn't place their orders," Bourla said on a November earnings call.
Looking ahead…Pfizer's top-line revenue could be astonishing next year. While it projects another $29 billion in annual sales from its vaccine, it has also developed a Covid antiviral pill, Paxlovid, which was authorized by the FDA this month. That drug could bring in an estimated $17 billion in revenue in 2022.
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Runner up: SpaceX. Elon Musk's company is the clear leader in the fast-growing private space industry, and it had itself an impressive 2021. It beat out Blue Origin for a lunar lander contract with NASA, launched the first-ever mission of all amateur astronauts, and, since May 2019 it has sent nearly 2,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit to build out its Starlink broadband internet system.
Runner up: Amazon. Founder Jeff Bezos may have stepped down as CEO over the summer, but under new CEO Andy Jassy the company is continuing to expand its reach into areas like advertising, media rights, and logistics. It still has a strained relationship with its warehouse and delivery workers (remember the pee bottles?)—a high-profile union vote at an Alabama facility was defeated in April, but workers there will get a chance at another vote after the National Labor Relations Board found that the company improperly tampered with the first election.—NF
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