COVID-19 Vaccine update

As the US government prepares to authorize immediate distribution of Covid-19 vaccine, Wall Street analysts are projecting pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna will generate $32 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue, next year alone.

According to Wall Street analyst, Morgan Stanley, Pfizer (PFE) by itself is projected to make $19 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue in 2021, that doesn't include an estimated $975 million in 2020 vaccine revenue.

Pfizer is expected to take in $9.3 billion more in combined Covid-19 vaccine revenue in 2022 and 2023 as the world continues to get vaccinated, Morgan Stanley also projected.

Pfizer will share its revenues with BioNTech (BNTX), the German pharmaceutical company it partnered with to develop the vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine was already authorized by the UK earlier this month and now a panel of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisers recommended on Thursday,December 10,  that the FDA grant emergency use authorization to the vaccine produced by both companies

Pfizer's expected revenue in 2021 would  surpass the company's bestselling product from last year: a pneumonia vaccine that generated $5.8 billion in sales.

Shares of BioNTech, a roughly new company compared to Pfizer, are booming.

Its US-listed shares have grown by nearly 300%, pushing the German company's valuation to nearly $30 billion while Moderna made just $60 million in revenue last year.

Now Moderna is valued at $62 billion according to Morgan Stanley who said shares of the company have climbed by over 700 percent this year alone.

Another Wall Street guru, Goldman Sachs, says Moderna is expected to rake in $13.2 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue next year.

Morgan Stanley added that Moderna's skyrocketing share price implies investors expect the company will make $10 billion to $15 billion off Covid-19 vaccine sales in both 2021 and 2022, followed by billions more in booster sales- a huge sum for company that generated just $60 million in sales in 2019 and has never previously licensed a product.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have released data indicating their vaccine candidates are highly effective at preventing Covid-19.

Moderna's coronavirus vaccine "demonstrated that the technology is safe and effective, which unlocks the potential of other vaccines in the pipeline," Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Harrison wrote in a recent note to clients.

More than one-quarter of Moderna's market value is now assigned to its other mRNA vaccines, Morgan Stanley estimates.

Meanwhile rival drug makers Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and AstraZeneca (AZN) have promised to make their vaccines available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.

"It is absolutely wrong for drug companies like Pfizer and Moderna to profiteer, and for their executives to make egregious personal fortunes, off of Covid-19 vaccines that have been so heavily subsidized and supported by American taxpayers," said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog and patient advocacy group.

In a statement last month, Pfizer said its Covid-19 vaccine development and manufacturing costs "have been entirely self-funded, with billions of dollars already invested at risk."
"The company will continue bearing all the costs of development and manufacturing in an effort to help find a solution to this pandemic as fast as possible," Pfizer said at the time.

The US government have agreed to pay $1.95 billion for the first 100 million doses of vaccine.