Matej Mikulic
Research expert covering health, pharma & medtech
Pfizer - Statistics & Facts
Since 2020, Pfizer has been in the world’s focus due to its COVID-19 vaccine named Comirnaty that was developed in cooperation with German biotech company BioNTech. This was the first COVID-19 vaccine widely approved by national health authorities. Thanks to its massive sales during the pandemic, Pfizer is currently the world’s leading pharmaceutical company based on pharma sales revenue. The New York City-based company generated a record high of over 100 billion U.S. dollars of total revenue in 2022. However, with the end of the pandemic and the decrease in COVID-19 vaccinations, sales in 2023 dropped to 58 billion dollars.
Blockbusters and spin-offs
Pfizer manufactured some of the best-selling pharmaceutical products worldwide. Lipitor was Pfizer’s top drug for many years, but lost its patent in May 2012. Thus, Lipitor’s revenue decreased from around 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 to some 1.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. Other well-known drugs produced by Pfizer are Lyrica and Viagra. Due to the spin-off of Pfizer's generics business Upjohn during 2020, these drugs are now owned and manufactured by Viatris (formed in late 2020 by the merger of Mylan with Upjohn). Until 2013, Pfizer also had a notable animal health product line.R&D spending record during the pandemic
As is common practice in the pharmaceutical industry, Pfizer spends a substantial part of its revenue on research and development. In 2023, the company’s R&D expenditure stood at 10.7 billion U.S. dollars, or around 18 percent of its total revenue. Pfizer has been among the companies with the highest number of products in the R&D pipeline to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. With some 88 thousand employees in 2023, Pfizer is also a significant employer all over the world.
