Much has been made of Pfizer reaching the extraordinary mark of $100 billion in revenues in 2022, in large part undoubtedly thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and its famous COVID-19 “vaccine”. Indeed, Pfizer’s year-end earnings report shows that COVID-19 vaccine sales alone account for nearly 38% of those $100 billion in revenues (p.30).
But revenues are revenues. What counts, of course, are profits. And half of the profits on its COVID-19 vaccine sales are not in fact profits for Pfizer, but rather costs. How could that be?
Well, it is because “Pfizer’s” COVID-19 vaccine is not in fact Pfizer’s. Legally, Pfizer is not even the manufacturer. Pfizer is rather a contract manufacturer that produces and markets the vaccine on behalf of its actual owner, the German company BioNTech. It says so right on the product’s label!
And per the terms of the collaboration agreement between the two firms, Pfizer pays BioNTech gets a 50% share of its gross profits for the privilege of so doing. (See my article “50/50 Split: BioNTech and The Pfizer Illusion” or section 4.9.1 of the collaboration agreement here.)
After deduction of this 50% BioNTech share as “cost of sale”, Pfizer has estimated that its own remaining profit margin on COVID-19 vaccine sales is in the “high-20s as a percentage of revenues”. (See, for instance, the quarterly earnings report here, p.4.)
Let us split the difference and assume a 27.5% Pfizer profit margin. Applying this margin to Pfizer’s $37.8 billion in 2022 COVID-19 vaccine revenues gives around $10.4 billion in profits.
So, BioNTech earned the same amount? Well, no. BioNTech earned more.
Among other possible reasons, this is because whereas the companies split profits 50-50 on sales in the Pfizer sales territory, BioNTech also has its own reserved sales markets (Germany and Turkey) and sells the product in partnership with the Chinese company Fosun Pharma on still other markets (Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, but still not mainland China where the drug has never been authorized).
So, how much did BioNTech earn? It would seem that hardly anyone wanted to know – or, at any rate, not in the Twittersphere. Thus, while Pfizer’s hefty 2022 earnings were the subject of many a viral tweet, with Elon Musk himself even helping out to amplify one with a couple of exclamation points (see below), BioNTech’s late March release of its own 2022 earnings report passed virtually unnoticed on Twitter and elsewhere.
Nonetheless, the company’s 2022 COVID-19 vaccine profit figure is right there: namely, on p.161 under “Operating Results”. See below. No need to worry about profits on sales of any other products – since BioNTech does not have any other products. €12.95 billion. Or, at the average 2022 rate of exchange, $13.6 billion. So, roughly $3 billion and 30% more than Pfizer.
And if the difference in profits is significant, consider the difference in profit margin. BioNTech made €12.95 billion in profits on €17.3 billion in revenues for a whopping 75% profit margin! This as compared to Pfizer’s “high 20s” on C-19 vaccine revenues and 34.6% on all revenues. (See p.20 of the Pfizer earnings report for the company’s total pre-tax income.)
BioNTech’s astronomic profit margin reflects the fact that it bears very little of the costs associated with producing the drug. BioNTech does undertake some production activities for some markets: namely, producing synthetic mRNA, which it manufactures at its production facilities in Marburg.
But the costs involved in this are evidently minor compared to the costs borne by Pfizer. And remember that all the costs borne by Pfizer flow into and thus inflate the widely-cited revenue figures. This is why BioNTech’s profit margin on vaccine sales is so much higher than Pfizer’s.
In 2021, the difference between the BioNTech and Pfizer hauls was even greater, largely due to substantial milestone payments that Pfizer owed BioNTech per the terms of the collaboration agreement. Thus, BioNTech earned €15 billion on an even higher 79% profit margin! (See the second column above.)
At the average 2021 rate of exchange, €15 billion is equivalent to roughly $17.75 billion. Pfizer, by comparison, made roughly $10 billion in COVID-19 vaccine profits in 2021. (For Pfizer’s 2021 earnings and the calculation of this figure, see “50/50 Split”.)
So, for 2021 and 2022 combined, BioNTech made over $31 billion in COVID-19 vaccine profits on a 77% profit margin as compared to Pfizer’s just over $20 billion on the estimated 27.5% profit margin. So, BioNTech made 50% more profits on a nearly three times higher profit margin.
Not bad for a company that had never turned any profit before 2021.
Can I get a “!!” from Elon Musk?
Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, translator and researcher working in Europe. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter.
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Mr Gates was invested in both companies.
This is interesting inside information of just how unscrupulous and deceitful Big pharma is. I’ve never heard of the ‘Pre-randomization selection phase’ and I’m wondering if this is why the pharma companies all hardly had any elderly participants in their trials, despite the fact their injections were going to be targeted at this cohort as a priority. Wouldn’t you think a trial would have at least 50% of the targeted recipients for their products rather than weed them out before the trial even starts, with the most healthy and robust volunteers making up the majority? You’re deliberately creating bias before you’ve even began, surely?
”It’s basically when they’re selecting the participants for the study, and this is where Big Pharma gets crafty. They cherry-pick the healthiest individuals who are least likely to experience side effects from the drug being tested. So, They’re really going for the A-team here, people who are perfect specimens of health.
What about those who might be more prone to experiencing side effects? Well, Big Pharma makes sure to weed them out before the trial even kicks off. It’s like they’re throwing a super exclusive party and handpicking the guest list to ensure everything goes off without a hitch.
By doing this, they can paint a pretty picture of their drugs, making them seem like miracle workers without any downsides. It’s all about crafting that perfect image, right?”
https://pharmafiles.substack.com/p/aseem-exposing-pharmas-playbook
Read RF Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci” for the well referenced FACTS about how this all works and for how long they have been at it.
There was a (good) review of the book yesterday and full of dismissive comments here from people who had blatantly never even looked at it.
Yes, RFK is a Dimmocrat. Yes he’s no good on the Climate scam. Yes he isn’t the second Messiah. But you need to read this book.
And Turtles All The Way Down.
Windfall tax anyone?
Corporate death duties a better name?
Genuine question: who was responsible for the trials?
(And thus where does the responsibility for the trials fraud lie?)
I sometimes find the headline of articles on the Daily Sceptic misleadingly misrepresent the article. It may be that the headline is not written by the same person who wrote the article. In this case, yes “BioNTech is the Big Winner From the Vaccine Bonanza”, but so too is Pfizer. There can be more than one “Big Winner”!
All about the money. Revolving door between regulators and pharma. Politicians probably paid off as well.
Probably?
Probably?
HoHo.
Very droll!
Droll indeed.. haha
It is well known that Germany is the biggest funder of the WHO, that BioNTech has now become responsible for about 1%age point of German GDP and that the Hexal/Pharma-Brothers Spruengmann are its largest individual shareholders who pull the strings behind the scenes there and in that industry.
That and Germany’s longstanding but before that occurrence declining pharma heritage explains it going all in on this particular crap, that company’s crap in development, the biotech industry in general being hyped now and any other medically pointless draconian Covid restriction with full typical German verve.
The same German verve that gave us Xyklon B
Sorry to say Devon but the stories about XB are just that.. stories. It was a pesticide for clearing lice. Past down history eh.. you can’t trust it..
Intra-body nano networks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9671267/
BioNTech manufactures synthetic mRNA at its production facilities in where?
Marburg. As in Marburg Virus. The WHO hyped flesh eating deadly disease which may be set to sweep the earth.
Named thus I believe because the first western victims of this hemorrhagic fever occurred in laboratories in Marburg.
I wonder what they were doing…
There’s a very rude old joke.. asking who put the * in Scu*thorpe.. but I wonder who put the * in Bio*Tech.. and just maybe that * means *ano.. as in *anotechnology.. SMART ain’t it..