WHEN: Today, Tuesday, February 8, 2022
WHERE: CNBC’s “The Exchange”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla on CNBC’s “The Exchange” (M-F, 1PM-2PM ET) today, Tuesday, February 8th. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com:
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
MEG TIRRELL: Well Kelly, thanks so much. Albert, it’s great to see you. Thanks for being with us. Now, let’s start with the quarter and your forecast. You know, you forecast $54 billion in combined sales of your COVID vaccine and your antiviral drug on top of the rest of the business but the stock is down as Kelly was pointing out. What do you make of the investor reaction here?
ALBERT BOURLA: You know, when it comes to stock price, it’s never a sprint. It’s always a marathon and you know, you always have this volatility because some people are taking let’s say opportunities from price either to sell or to buy. I think we should look beyond what happens this day and I think the numbers that we gave for guidance for this year that were at record high, not only for Pfizer I think for the industry, with the first time hundred billions of revenues on the midpoint of the guidance. It’s nothing that have not been happened before.
TIRRELL: And of course, one of the major drivers of that guidance is your antiviral pill, PAXLOVID, forecasting $22 billion in revenue for this year, and that’s a number that analysts said they expect could go up because you could sign more supply deals for it. You also showed how the manufacturing supply is expected to ramp really a lot toward the end of this year. At what point are you expecting it’ll be a lot easier for people here in the United States to access this drug that it will be more widely available?
BOURLA: First of all, here in the United States, every month will be better than the previous one. We are giving way more in February than we gave in March, than we gave in January, way more in March and I think significant quantities starting in April. So, I think pretty soon they will be let’s say way easier for people to find PAXLOVID. Right now, the states are working reasonably well. Most of the states immediately order all the allocation that the US government is giving them which is basically what we are giving them, and this number right now is way, way higher than what used to be a year ago, for example, the first month of the vaccines. As we remember, we had more product than the system could absorb. Now, this is not the case. I also want to clarify something that when we speak about the guidance and forecast, for the remaining of the business, it is quite predictable that we are giving as usual a forecast. We calculate how much we think, for example, our products will be utilized at the current price and what that means financially for us. When it comes to COVID vaccine or the pills, we are not following this process. We are giving only the numbers that are coming from signed contracts or contracts that are about to be signed and have been agreed the terms, volumes, prices and we are just about to sign. This clearly is not the way that the analysts forecast. They are not having visibility into contracts. They are looking to see how much we will do. I think this was the disconnect. Clearly, it’s expected that more contracts will be signed because right now for PAXLOVID, we are in discussions with almost 100 governments around the world and for comirnaty as well, there are a lot of governments.
TIRRELL: Well it makes sense and on the vaccine comirnaty of course on Friday, we are expecting to see the data in your FDA briefing documents for the vaccine for kids under five. A lot of parents are wondering how optimistic to be about getting this vaccine and getting access to it sooner with these two doses. How optimistic should parents like me feel about having a protective and safe vaccine with two doses as it goes through this FDA process relatively soon?
BOURLA: I think the chances are very high to be, for FDA to approve it and for the ACIP, the CDC to recommend it, but of course I can’t speak about them. We need to have to wait for the process to go through so that the committee of external experts should see the data. And also the same with ACIP. Given everything, I think that they will be pleased with the data and they will approve it.
TIRRELL: Well, I definitely can’t wait to see it. I also of course have to ask you about a topic you got a lot of questions about on the call, which is M&A and you guys aren’t shy about saying you’ve got a lot of firepower, a lot of cash coming in, and you’re not going to hold back on potentially spending it on something potentially large. How big of M&A deals are you looking at potentially?
BOURLA: Yes, I never use the word spending because we don’t spend, we invest and the investments will go to science. This was the right thing for the company right now and I think for, for the world right now. We believe that there is enough substrate out there, scientific substrate that we could add dramatically higher value as we did with the partnership with BioNTech for example, and more of that will be seen. We believe that by deploying capital in the next several years, we should be able to get science that for the analyst will be translated in risk adjusted revenues of at least 25 billions in year 2030. That’s on top of whatever our current business will do, on top of what our current pipeline will deliver and of course, on top of whatever the current comirnaty and PAXLOVID will do by that year.
TIRRELL: Well, that’s not small. Albert Bourla, thanks so much for spending this time with us. We look forward to catching up with you again. Thanks again.
BOURLA: Thank you very much.
