Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Billions more in profits are at stake for some vaccine makers as the U.S. moves toward dispensing COVID-19 booster shots to shore up Americans' protection against the virus.
How much the manufacturers stand to gain depends on how big the rollout proves to be.
U.S. health officials late on Thursday endorsed booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine for all Americans 65 and older -- along with tens of millions of younger people who are at higher risk from the coronavirus because of health conditions or their jobs.
Officials described the move as a first step. Boosters will likely be offered even more broadly in the coming weeks or months, including boosters of vaccines made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. That, plus continued growth in initial vaccinations, could mean a huge gain in sales and profits for Pfizer and Moderna in particular.
"The opportunity quite frankly is reflective of the billions of people around the world who would need a vaccination and a boost," Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said.
Wall Street is taking notice. The average forecast among analysts for Moderna's 2022 revenue has jumped 35% since President Joe Biden laid out his booster plan in mid-August.
Most of the vaccinations so far in the U.S. have come from Pfizer, which developed its shot with Germany's BioNTech, and Moderna. They have inoculated about 99 million and 68 million people, respectively. Johnson & Johnson is third with about 14 million people.
No one knows yet how many people will get the extra shots. But Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen expects boosters alone to bring in about $26 billion in global sales next year for Pfizer and BioNTech and around $14 billion for Moderna if they are endorsed for nearly all Americans.
Those companies also may gain business from people who got other vaccines initially. In Britain, which plans to offer boosters to everyone over 50 and other vulnerable people, an expert panel has recommended that Pfizer's shot be the primary choice, with Moderna as the alternative.
Andersen expects Moderna, which has no other products on the market, to generate a roughly $13 billion profit next year from all COVID-19 vaccine sales if boosters are broadly authorized.
Potential vaccine profits are harder to estimate for Pfizer, but company executives have said they expect their pre-tax adjusted profit margin from the vaccine to be in the "high 20s" as a percentage of revenue. That would translate to a profit of around $7 billion next year just from boosters, based on Andersen's sales prediction.
J&J and Europe's AstraZeneca have said they don't intend to profit from their COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
For Pfizer and Moderna, the boosters could be more profitable than the original doses because they won't come with the research and development costs the companies incurred to get the vaccines on the market in the first place.
WBB Securities CEO Steve Brozak said the booster shots will represent "almost pure profit" compared with the initial doses.
Drugmakers aren't the only businesses that could see a windfall from delivering boosters. Drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens could bring in more than $800 million each in revenue, according to Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds.
Jonas noted that the drugstores may not face competition from mass vaccination clinics this time around, and the chains are diligent about collecting customer contact information. That makes it easy to invite people back for boosters.
Drugmakers are also developing COVID-19 shots that target certain variants of the virus, and say people might need annual shots like the ones they receive for the flu. All of that could make the vaccines a major recurring source of revenue.
The COVID-19 vaccines have already done much better than their predecessors.
Pfizer said in July it expects revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine to reach $33.5 billion this year, an estimate that could change depending on the impact of boosters or the possible expansion of shots to elementary school children.
That would be more than five times the $5.8 billion racked up last year by the world's most lucrative vaccine -- Pfizer's Prevnar13, which protects against pneumococcal disease.
It also would dwarf the $19.8 billion brought in last year by AbbVie's rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira, widely regarded as the world's top-selling drug.
This bodes well for future vaccine development, noted Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.
Vaccines normally are nowhere near as profitable as treatments, Gordon said. But the success of the COVID-19 shots could draw more drugmakers and venture capitalists into the field.
"The vaccine business is more attractive, which, for those of us who are going to need vaccines, is good," Gordon said.
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
Police are investigating after a transport truck collided with a train in Sarnia.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
As some family doctors are retiring and others are moving away from family medicine, there are fewer medical students to take their place.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.