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(Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc. forecast 2025 sales and earnings in line with analysts’ projections, a step toward fending off an activist investor’s claims that the drugmaker is being mismanaged.
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Revenue next year will be $61 billion to $64 billion, Pfizer said Tuesday in a statement. Wall Street analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected $63.2 billion. The company’s profit outlook of $2.80 to $3 a share also roughly hit analysts’ mark.
The guidance “balances conservatism with achievability and room for modest upgrades throughout the year,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said in a note to clients.
The shares rose as much as 4.8% as of 10:39 a.m. Tuesday in New York after losing 12% this year through Monday.
Starboard Value LP Chief Executive Officer Jeff Smith has publicly accused Pfizer of squandering its Covid successes and suggested that CEO Albert Bourla might need to be replaced. Bloomberg reported in October that Starboard had amassed a $1 billion stake in the company.
Pfizer shares have lost more than half their value since peaking in late 2021, when sales of pandemic products were still strong. Meanwhile, Bourla has done a series of deals worth $70 billion, including last year’s $43 billion purchase of cancer drug developer Seagen.
Starboard has said Pfizer overspent on deals and has generated poor returns on its internal research.
Before the Starboard stake became public, Pfizer had announced plans for $5.5 billion in cost cuts. In late October, Bourla said he would do “whatever it takes” to keep profits growing, and the company announced an additional $500 million in cost cuts Tuesday.
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In November, Pfizer named oncology research head Chris Boshoff to become its chief scientific officer starting next month. He will have a lot to tackle as the company’s efforts to develop an obesity pill have yet to produce much even as the field explodes. Meanwhile, a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy also failed in a big trial in June.
On a conference call with analysts Tuesday, Bourla briefly spoke about having dinner recently with president-elect Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for health secretary. “The president is very proud of the work that was done” to develop Covid vaccines in record time in 2020, Bourla said.
While he declined to go into details of the dinner conversation, he said he had developed “a good relationship” with Kennedy, and if the nominee is confirmed, “we will work with him.”