The market vaccines Faced with Covid-19, does it look like a miracle for the producers of these precious doses, objects of all covetousness? Here’s an update on what the pandemic means for the pharmaceutical industry.
Follow the news of Tuesday February 16 on the coronavirus pandemic here
Billions of dollars in revenue
Pfizer Already announced: for the year 2021 alone, sales of its anti-Covid vaccine, developed in partnership with the German company BioNTech, will reach around 15 billion dollars. Not to mention any additional contracts.
In all, all laboratories combined, “This market could represent 30 to 40 billion dollars this year. A colossal change of prism ”, underlines Loïc Chabanier, from the consulting firm EY. This is more than all other vaccines – for example pediatric – in a normal year.
If only for the European Union, the sums are impressive, if we are to believe the unveiled prices during a blunder on Twitter in December by Belgian Secretary of State for the Budget, Eva De Bleeker.
On the assumption of $ 18 per dose, Moderna, which has signed a contract for up to 160 million doses, could for example rake in $ 3 billion.
Profits difficult to determine
Difficult, according to specialists, to determine exactly the profits of the laboratories. Between AstraZeneca’s vaccine (€ 1.78 per unit) and Moderna’s vaccine, prices vary greatly, as do the technologies used and the strategies. AstraZeneca explained in particular that it wanted to sell its vaccine at cost price, during the time of the pandemic anyway.
“There is an unknown on profitability”, judge Jean-Jacques Le Fur, analyst specialized in the pharmaceutical industry for Bryan, Garnier & Co.
Sometimes these are new technologies, industrial expansion, partnerships between players, he underlines: “The final industrial cost price becomes a little more complex to determine. “
Quick profitability, a significant investment
The pandemic has in any case upset the traditional economic model, believes Loïc Chabanier. “In industry, very often the vaccine is not very profitable financially at the start, it is in the long term that the economic model was established. However, here the model is profitable from the start ”, he said, the demand is so immense.
Pfizer has also indicated that it expects to generate a pre-tax margin on this product of around 25% to 30%.
Be careful, however, not to shoot a red ball on the laboratories, warn specialists, who point out the risks taken by these actors.
“Pfizer has invested nearly $ 2 billion in research, they will pay off quite quickly”, comments Christelle Cottenceau, project director at the Alcimed firm.
“But they started investing without knowing what they were going to find. Many vaccine candidates are stopping at the moment ”, and these companies will never recoup their costs in terms of the investment made for this research, she explains.
The premium for the former?
The first to arrive are well placed to collect gigantic orders. But that does not mean that there will be no room for the following ones. What will happen if the variants require you to be vaccinated every year? That the Covid is becoming as regular as the flu?
“Given the scale, the global impact and the logistical constraints, there is still room for a certain number of players”, believes Loïc Chabanier.
“Those who arrive afterwards have easier logistics to implement”, also judges Jean-Jacques Le Fur.
According to a recent estimate by GlobalData, sales of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine could even decline by nearly 80% next year due to competition from other vaccines.
This is, according to Christelle Cottenceau, good news: “It seems there are a lot of products that work. This maintains a level of competition. “
A new deal for vaccines
The Covid-19 could in any case, according to specialists, reshuffle the cards in the very closed vaccine sector.
Because this industry is traditionally shared by four behemoths which alone account for 90% of the market by value, according to EvaluatePharma: the Americans Pfizer and Merck, the British GSK and the French Sanofi.
Yet the arrival of messenger RNA vaccines – the innovative technology used by Moderna and Pfizer – “Will probably change part of the situation”, according to Mr. Chabanier.
“We realize that the results of this technology are quite exceptional in terms of efficiency, ability to evolve, side effects which seem very low”, he explains.
And new players could carve out a slice of the pie in future vaccines.
“We can even think of a combination of influenza / Covid vaccine”, anticipates Jean-Jacques Le Fur. With the key a place to be taken for these biotechs which will have done so much about them, even for new actors, Chinese or Russian.
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