Pneumococcal 7-valent conjugate vaccine(Pfizer Inc.)

Beyond a $30 million upfront payment, Novavax could be in line for up to $500 million in development and sales milestones as part of a new deal with Pfizer.\n Pfizer is paying $30 million to use Novavax’s adjuvant technology to improve the efficacy of two of the Big Pharma’s vaccine programs.The tech, called Matrix-M, is designed to trigger an immune response by T cells. Sanofi already secured a nonexclusive license to use Matrix-M as part of a wider-ranging deal to co-commercialize Novavax’s COVID-19 shot Nuvaxovid back in 2024.Pfizer, which oversees a significant vaccines business, hasn’t given any indication of exactly how it plans to implement the tech, while Novavax’s release only mentions that the Big Pharma has secured the nonexclusive right to use the adjuvant for “up to two disease areas.”Beyond the $30 million upfront payment, Novavax could be in line for up to $500 million in development and sales milestones as well as tiered high mid-single-digit percentage royalty payments on sales should a resulting vaccine make it to market.“The Novavax team is excited about this agreement with Pfizer to access our Matrix-M technology in its future development plans,” Novavax CEO John Jacobs said in the Jan. 20 release.“This agreement, along with other recently formed partnerships, is further evidence of the potential utility of Matrix-M for the development of new products,” Jacobs added. Pfizer’s most recent earnings results suggested the company’s vaccine offerings are struggling in the face of a U.S. market that is currently proving unfavorable for immunizations.Among the shots that received top billing in Pfizer’s third-quarter earnings report last November, only the tick-borne encephalitis shot TicoVac posted sales gains (PDF). Meanwhile, the Prevnar family of pneumococcal vaccines, the company\'s respiratory syncytial virus shot Abrysvo and the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty all suffered year-over-year sales declines.The Pfizer agreement is a sign that Novavax is getting back on track after a rocky period that saw two of the biopharma\'s programs briefly placed on hold in late 2024 in response to a case of nerve disease from a former participant in a trial of the biotech’s COVID-influenza combination vaccine. More recently, the company consolidated its Maryland-based locations in order to net savings. Jacobs has cited partnerships as being key to the company’s long-term growth strategy.

Pfizer is forecasting its 2026 revenue to be in the range of $59.5 billion to $62.5 billion, triggering a 5% decline in its share price. With COVID sales falling and patent protections expiring, Pfizer is forecasting its 2026 revenue to be in the range of $59.5 billion to $62.5 billion. The midpoint of the projection ($61 billion) would be a decline from this year’s estimated revenue of $62 billion—which the company reaffirmed on Tuesday. It would also be an additional slide from Pfizer’s 2024 revenue of $63.6 billion.Built into the 2026 guidance is a $1.5 billion decline in sales of its COVID products—from an estimated $6.5 billion this year to $5 billion in expected sales next year. The company also expects to sustain a $1.5 billion hit from the loss of exclusivity (LOE) of its products.As those LOEs escalate in the coming years—to $3 billion-plus in 2027 and $6-plus in 2028—the drugmaker said that it doesn’t expect to see growth until 2029.With the updated guidance, Pfizer’s share price fell by 5% by mid-morning on Tuesday.“Once 2028 is behind us, the vast majority of those LOEs are done and the growth drivers that we invest in over the next several years will be maintained and that should allow us to begin to accelerate the top line,” Pfizer chief financial officer Dave Denton said in a conference call. As for its COVID products, Denton said that sales of its antiviral Paxlovid are tumbling at a higher rate than those for its mRNA vaccine.“Paxlovid is more significantly affected as its utilization is directly related to infection rates of the COVID virus,” Denton said. “Comirnaty has shown a slower rate of decline as patients continue to seek protection from COVID via vaccinations despite the narrowing of government eligibility recommendations.”After removing the effects of the LOEs and the COVID products, Pfizer is projecting an approximate 4% increase in operational growth (PDF).In April of this year, Pfizer revealed that it was upping the ante on its cost-cutting efforts, plotting an additional $1.2 billion in reductions largely tied to selling, informational and administrative functions.“We remain on track to deliver about $7.2 billion in total combined net cost savings, with the majority of the savings now expected by the end of 2026 rather than in 2027,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in the conference call. As for the company’s reliance on its deep vaccine portfolio, Bourla reassured investors that the current threat to sales of its products in the U.S. is an “anomaly.”In the third quarter, Pfizer’s numbers (PDF) were particularly indicative of the erosion in demand for immunizations in the U.S. While sales of its Prevnar franchise of pneumococcal vaccines were up 18% year over year outside of the U.S., they were down 12% domestically. The same was true of Comirnaty, which saw a 9% sales increase internationally and a 25% decline in the U.S.“Vaccines are an essential part of any healthcare system,” Bourla said. “It is the most cost-effective intervention to prevent illness in the world and that will continue. We’re not going away. I can assure you, we are not going back to Louis Pasteur times or before his times.” Bourla added that Pfizer has not altered the way it views its long-term investments on vaccines.“Let’s not forget, the CDC used to be the most reliable and credible organization in the world, that everybody was looking up at,” Bourla said. “I think we need to let the whole thing play [out]. It is an anomaly that will correct itself. It’s mostly driven politically.”