Sorry for the lack of posts, readers! I’m really busy on the home-stretch of that Top Companies special issue. Gotta finish the final profile today, so’s I can head to the shore tomorrow without worrying about it.<\/p>\n
I decided to save the biggest one for last: Pfizer. As you may not care from last year, Pfizer is the biggest of the Big Pharmas, but it’s also got a ton of vulnerabilities, as many of its big sellers are getting hit with patent expirations and generic competitors. Here’s a little bit of this year’s report, just so you know I’m not slacking off from VM for no reason:<\/p>\n
In his 2005 letter to shareholders, Pfizer chairman and chief executive officer Hank A. McKinnell, Jr. wrote, “The Pfizer built in the 1990s is fading away as some of our prominent, current medicines lose patent protection. This transformation process\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dthis cycle of renewal\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009dis not unexpected. We have been planning for it for years, understanding that while renewal brings challenges, it also creates numerous opportunities.”<\/p>\n
That’s quite an understatement. Last year, we pointed out that many of Pfizer’s top sellers are going to lose patent protection in the next five years. The company got a feel for what’s on the way when epilepsy treatment Neurontin went generic during 2005; the drug’s sales dropped from $2.7 billion to $640 million. Antifungal treatment Diflucan did the same, shedding $445 million in sales.<\/p>\n
With $1.3 billion of Bextra sales vaporized in 2005, and Celebrex shedding another $1.6 billion, Pfizer needed to add $6.1 billion in sales last year just to keep pace. That’s more revenue than any of the bottom three companies on our list generated in 2005.<\/p>\n
And with Zithromax facing its first full year without U.S. patent protection ($2.0 billion in 2005 sales, after its patent expired in 4Q2005), Zoloft ($3.3 billion) going generic in June 2006, and Norvasc ($4.7 billion, the company’s #2 seller) and Zyrtec ($1.3 billion) set to lose protection in 2007, Pfizer needs to generate huge amounts of new revenues.<\/p>\n
It fell short in that mission in 2005, with drug sales falling $2.0 billion in 2005. They’re down $394 million in 1Q2006 (-4%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Tune in next year to find out if Pfizer manages to recoup sales with Lyrica, Sutent, Chantix, and a million other new drugs!<\/p>\n
Till then, back to work. Then play!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sorry for the lack of posts, readers! I’m really busy on the home-stretch of that Top Companies special issue. Gotta finish the final profile today, so’s I can head to the shore tomorrow without worrying about it. I decided to save the biggest one for last: Pfizer. As you may not care from last year, … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Pf***ed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmaceuticals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-pfed","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3689,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/too-big-to-fail","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":0},"title":"Too Big To Fail?","author":"Gil","date":"March 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's my From the Editor column from the March issue of my magazine. Enjoy: Too Big To Fail? The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a deepening productivity crisis. The industry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferred escape mechanism from this predicament has been to increase investment in current business activities \u00e2\u20ac\u201d primarily R&D and sales \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1233,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pfailed","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":1},"title":"Pfailed","author":"Gil","date":"December 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What a difference two days make. On Nov. 30, Pfizer gave an \"R&D open house\" event where it discussed its drug pipeline. The biggest drug in that pipeline is torcetrapib, a compound that raises \"good\" cholesterol. For years, Pfizer's been developing it as a combo-drug with Lipitor (atorvastatin), which reduces\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1573,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/drop-and-give-me-1800","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":2},"title":"Drop and give me 1,800!","author":"Gil","date":"July 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":". . . words, that is. There's only one profile remaining for me to write for the Top Companies issue: Pfizer! (I save the biggest for last; that's just the sorta guy that I am.)","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":910,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-job-destruction","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":3},"title":"More on Job Destruction","author":"Gil","date":"April 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last July, I wrote about the nuttiness of the American Jobs Creation Act, a one-time tax break for companies bringing overseas profits back to the U.S. (the tax rate on such earnings drops from about 38% to about 5%). Michelle Leder at Slate just wrote about the subject, calling it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":534,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/blood-tar-and-coffee-grounds","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":4},"title":"Blood, Tar and Coffee Grounds","author":"Gil","date":"April 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In my secret identity, I'm the mild-mannered (okay, angry and abrasive) editor of a pharmaceutical business magazine. The big news in the biz this week was that the FDA \"recommended\" that Pfizer stop selling Bextra, a Cox-2 inhibiting anti-inflammatory in the same class of drugs as Vioxx and Celebrex. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/drug-deal","url_meta":{"origin":1019,"position":5},"title":"Drug Deal","author":"Gil","date":"April 28, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm on a press trip in Puerto Rico this week, as mentioned earlier, and it's been sorta tough to get any blogging done. The perfect sunlight tends to, um, make too much glare on the laptop's screen. Yeah, that's it.Anyway, this morning, before heading out to the beach from my\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}