Matej Mikulic
Research expert covering health, pharma & medtech
BioNTech - Statistics & Facts
BioNTech is especially well-known for its COVID-19 vaccine, the first of its kind that became widely available across Western countries. The vaccine was originally discovered by BioNTech, but was later developed through all stages of the pipeline in cooperation with American pharma giant Pfizer. The vaccine – named Comirnaty - was the best-selling biopharmaceutical product worldwide in 2021 and 2022, breaking the all-time record of AbbVie’s blockbuster drug Humira. Boosted by the global vaccination campaign to stem the pandemic, Comirnaty totaled more than 40 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2022, thus bringing huge profits to both BioNTech and Pfizer. Together with U.S. company Moderna, BioNTech was clearly the top riser during the COVID-19 pandemic among smaller and mid-sized biotech enterprises. One of the reasons for this success was that both companies based their vaccines on the innovative mRNA technology. In 2023, due to the retreat of the COVID-19 threat, Comirnaty saw a massive decrease in sales, but holding a place among the global top 10 pharma products.
Under pressure after end of the pandemic
A view on BioNTech’s financial key figures shows how important the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020 and the breakthrough year 2021 were. Between 2020 and 2021, annual revenue for BioNTech increased almost 40-fold, from 482 million euros to nearly 19 billion euros. In the course of 2020-2021, the company became profitable for the first time since its foundation. 2021 brought the company a massive profit of 10.3 billion euros, compared to only 15 million euros in the preceding year. Since the COVID-19 vaccine is BioNTech’s only profitable product, the company will be under increasing pressure to diversify its portfolio. Due to the successful containment of the pandemic, the global COVID-19 vaccine market is expected to drop in the years to come. This was clearly visible in BioNTech's 2023 revenues, which dropped to some 3.8 billion euros, compared to 17.3 billion euros in 2022.The pandemic brought the breakthrough
In 2008, BioNTech was established in Mainz, Germany, where the company still has its headquarters. As with so many other biotech start-ups, BioNTech’s focus from the very beginning has been research on cancer treatments, more precisely cancer immunotherapies. In late 2019, BioNTech founder Ugur Sahin quickly became convinced that the new coronavirus that was spreading in China, could evolve into a pandemic. He was also convinced that the mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) technology, on which his company had already been working on since 2013, was the key to a safe and effective vaccine. Work on the development of a new vaccine started in mid-January 2020. In December 2020, the British authorities were the first to provide emergency approval for the vaccine. The United States followed in the same month. More than 400 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine have been administered in the U.S. so far, including booster shots.
