It's a new year and COVID-19 is still with us. Last year we saw Emergency Use Authorizations for multiple COVID vaccines and treatments across the healthcare space. Pharmaceutical companies are set to make billions of dollars in 2022. Here are three stocks that should thrive.
Pfizer (PFE -3.85%), the $310 billion mega cap, is expected to bring in not $1 billion or $10 billion but over $50 billion in sales for its COVID vaccine and antiviral pill. Scrappy Novavax (NVAX -4.82%) is finally introducing its COVID vaccine around the world. How many billions will it receive? And we have a dark horse candidate in Vir Biotechnology (VIR -5.10%). It has a drug that could easily be a $1 billion blockbuster for the tiny biotech.
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A safe harbor in stormy weather
George Budwell (Pfizer): Pfizer is the undisputed champion of COVID-19 pharmaceutical products. In 2022 alone, Wall Street expects the pharma giant to rake in $55 billion in sales between its novel coronavirus vaccine, Comirnaty, and its oral antiviral pill, Paxlovid.
What's more, analysts are starting to warm up to the idea that Paxlovid might be a sustainable revenue generator for the company over the course of the current decade. When the drug was first allowed on the market by the Food and Drug Administration under the Emergency Use Authorization pathway last month, Wall Street thought Paxlovid would likely peak from a commercial standpoint within a year or so, and then experience a dramatic drop in sales as the pandemic faded from view.
But less than three weeks out from the drug's initial approval, it is becoming painfully obvious that Paxlovid will probably be required as a fail-safe against the worst outcomes from COVID-19 for several more years. The highly infectious omicron variant, after all, will certainly not be the last major iteration of the virus.
What this all means is that Pfizer ought to be one of the few large-cap drugmakers with a sizable, long-term COVID-19 revenue source. Pfizer, in turn, should have ample free cash flows to feed its generous shareholder reward program, as well as its ambitious business development plans, for the foreseeable future.
So, if you're looking for a stock that can weather the dual headwinds of sky-high inflation and rising interest rates, Pfizer might be worth checking out.
Revenue forecasts for Novavax: $2 billion to $8 billion
Taylor Carmichael (Novavax): Novavax is on the verge of greatness this year. The company's stock price is down to $125 a share. That's where it started in 2021, so last year was pretty much a washout for the stock.
Back in February the share price zoomed over $300 when Novavax reported positive phase 3 data for its COVID vaccine. But then the small biotech ran into manufacturing issues. While its vaccine is said by many to be the best in class, scaling up the contract manufacturing for an estimated 2 billion doses of vaccine is easier said than done. And those realities have caused the stock to drop about 60% off its highs.
Nonetheless, Novavax has already hit the $1 billion revenue mark, so its vaccine was a blockbuster even before it was approved, because of all the preorders. Now that authorizations are pouring in from around the globe, it's highly likely that Novavax will ship a massive number of vaccine doses in 2022. The company's already achieved a manufacturing capacity of 100 million doses a month, or 1.2 billion doses in a year. On the third-quarter earnings call, management predicted it would reach a manufacturing capacity of 150 million doses every month (or 1.8 billion doses a year) by the end of the fourth quarter. And the company expects to continue to scale and forecasts that it will distribute 2 billion doses in 2022.
Two billion doses of vaccine, at a price point of $16 (Operation Warp Speed paid $1.6 billion to pre-order 100 million doses) gives us a back-of-the-envelope calculation of $32 billion in revenue. Of course, Novavax will be distributing a lot of vaccines to the developing world at a reduced rate. While the company has been quiet about its prices, Denmark said back in August that it paid almost $21 a dose under the European Union (EU) agreement. The EU has ordered 200 million doses, so that's over $4 billion in sales, just in Europe.
Analysts are being extremely conservative, with a forecast ranging from $2 billion to $8 billion for Novavax in 2022. (The company's market cap sits at $9 billion.) While there may be hiccups along the way, Novavax is sure to make billions of dollars off its COVID-19 vaccine in 2022. And there could be significant upside to the stock if the company does indeed deliver 2 billion doses as it says it will.
The antibody market all to itself
Patrick Bafuma (Vir Biotechnology): The omicron variant is currently running rampant, and this time, we are short a few treatments. Previously favored monoclonal antibody treatments from Eli Lilly (bamlanivimab plus etesevimab) as well as the REGEN-COV cocktail from Roche and Regeneron are believed to have marked diminished activity against the current variant. This leaves a single infusion thought to be active against omicron -- GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology's sotrovimab. This monoclonal antibody previously demonstrated a reduced risk of hospitalization and death by 79% in adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 and at high risk of progression to severe disease. And it's the only one left right now to fight the omicron variant.
Being the sole monoclonal antibody on the block will have its privileges. Through the first nine months of 2021, REGEN-COV brought in $3.5 billion in net product sales, while Eli Lilly's antibody combination brought in $1.17 billion. The U.S. government has already contracted for approximately $1 billion worth of sotrovimab. With hospitals overflowing with patients, anything that can help alleviate some of the stress on the system is likely going to be highly sought after.
And while Pfizer's Paxlovid will be hugely beneficial to ease the COVID-19 burden on the healthcare system, the oral medication has significant and complex drug-drug interaction potential. In fact, its interaction list reads like a who's who of commonly prescribed medications. This includes popular blood thinning agents such as Plavix and Xarelto, common analgesics like Tramadol and oxycodone, anxiolytics like Klonopin and Xanax, as well as cholesterol-fighting statins. With the National Institutes of Health issuing a statement voicing its concern over Paxlovid's possible drug interactions, this leaves plenty of room for sotrovimab to continue to be widely prescribed. With Vir getting 72.5% of sotrovimab sales per its agreement with GSK, the $4.4 billion biotech looks like a bargain right now.
