Pfizer Stock Surges as It Says Outlook Will Match Wall Street Expectations

Sometimes, markets don’t need breathless buzzwords to get excited. Sometimes, “marginally encouraging” will do.

That’s how investment bank Leerink Partners described Pfizer’s announcement Tuesday that its 2025 revenue will be in line with Wall Street forecasts. With the company staring down an activist investor, trying to forge a post-covid revenue future, and a possible incoming Health and Human Services secretary who has expressed vaccine skepticism, meeting expectations was enough to lift its shares by 4.5%.

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Pfizer reeled in record profits during the pandemic thanks to its covid vaccine, but its share price has since tumbled, sitting at less than half of its December 2021 peak. The five-year chart of the firm’s stock price makes that high point look like part of a distant mountain range.

In October, activist investor Starboard acquired a $1 billion stake and went on the offensive, arguing investments in research and M&A by management had performed poorly, squandering billions in value. A shake-up was needed to return to the top of the mountain, in other words. But recent results, and Tuesday’s guidance, have lanced some of those bubbling concerns, introducing some calm to what was poised to play out as a riches-to-sagging-returns drama:

• Pfizer said Tuesday it will meet its goal to cut $4 billion in costs by the end of this year, with another $500 million in savings to be realized in 2025. It gave revenue guidance of $61 billion to $64 billion for 2024 and 2025, with adjusted earnings per share rising next year, in line with Wall Street’s expectations.
• Pfizer has also posted two consecutive quarters of revenue growth for the first time since the pandemic. The most recent quarterly results, announced in October, saw a 31% year-over-year uptick in sales to $17.7 billion, exceeding analysts estimates.

Good News From Trump 2.0: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla also delivered good news for essentially the entire pharma sector on Tuesday, when he said he doesn’t expect the incoming Trump administration to significantly alter vaccine policy. Bourla and Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks recently had dinner with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whom President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate to run the Health and Human Services Department and who has publicly expressed vaccine skepticism. Bourla said they “developed a good relationship” while Trump himself expressed his support for at least one vaccine — administered to prevent polio — at a presser on Monday.