A legal settlement has put wind behind Pfizer’s sales into 2029—at which point key obesity moves will take the helm.
Pfizer’s first quarter earnings story has little to do with 2026. The New York pharma is instead stacking up the building blocks to make 2029 the year that momentum turns.
A key legal settlement has given leadership confidence that Pfizer can achieve “high single digit” revenue growth for five years beginning in 2029. For the most recent quarter, Pfizer clocked 2% growth with $14.5 billion in revenue.
Pfizer recently reached agreements on the future patent expiry of transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) therapy Vyndamax, which will see generics enter in 2031 instead of 2028.
Vyndamax is a $6 billion product for Pfizer, CEO Albert Bourla explained on a first quarter earnings call Tuesday. The company had previously expected loss of exclusivity (LOE) in the 2030 time frame to impact $17 billion in annual revenue.
Pfizer has been making major acquisitions and investing in new products to offset the LOE—Metsera, Seagen and Biohaven’s migraine portfolio being the big ones over the past few years. These companies and assets were supposed to spur growth as the LOE period began and already have shown 22% growth, Bourla said.
In addition to delaying the patent cliff, the Vyndamax settlement has also padded Pfizer’s war chest, bringing the company’s deal firepower to $7 billion, executives said.
This gives Pfizer much more confidence in cash flow over the next couple of years, CFO Dave Denton said on Tuesday’s call, and adds more to the pool of money that had been earmarked for potential transactions.
Pressed by analysts for more details on the potential transaction size Pfizer may be seeking, Bourla stepped in: “We never say never, and we always look at every possible business combination for M&A. If you are asking me if right now we think that we are going to go for something very big, a big merger—no.”
Instead, Bourla insisted that Pfizer wants to focus on streamlining the company with AI. This process has been underway for several quarters now, resulting in a restructuring across the organization. That process could be disrupted with a megamerger, Bourla said.
“We are open to everything, and we are looking at everything that can create shareholder value, but it is not, right now, very high in our list to find something like that,” Bourla said.
Despite a strong start to the year, Pfizer did not raise guidance beyond the previously expected range of $59.5 to $62.5 billion for 2026. When asked why, CFO Dave Denton said he is typically conservative in his guidance during the first quarter. “I have a philosophy of not really adjusting in Q1,” he said. Rather, he said, Pfizer has “derisked delivery” on the existing 2026 guidance with the strong Q1 performance.
Looking longer term, analysts wanted to know what happens after 2029. Bourla and Alexandre de Germay, Pfizer’s chief international commercial officer, pointed to obesity and, more specifically, to international sales of weight loss drugs in the pharma’s portfolio and pipeline.
Pfizer launched the obesity therapy Severwin in China at the end of April, its official market entry into the disease space. The New York pharma partnered with China’s Sciwind Biosciences in February for $495 million upfront. De Germay did not offer specifics on the sales or prescriptions so far, but the Sciwind transaction gave Pfizer a leg up in the Chinese market where global leaders Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have been slow to enter.
“I’m very optimistic, both due to the profile of this asset and the capability that we have developed in China,” de Germay said.
Reflecting on his tenure, Bourla said he plans to stick around. He took the helm in 2019, a year before the world—and Pfizer—was forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was very proud [of] what we were able to achieve with COVID, but then if you’re spoiled with this feeling of satisfaction, you want to do it again,” the CEO said. “So I’m planning to do it again, and hopefully with cancer and obesity and vaccines this time.”
