Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of June 17, 2025

Article Excerpt

Pharmaceutical stocks are often riskier than most investors realize. Drug companies must spend large sums to develop new medications and therapies, many of which will fail. Those that do succeed, will eventually lose their patent protection and face strong competition from generic drug producers. Drugmakers also face political risk. For example, the Trump administration is now pressuring pharmaceutical producers to cut their U.S. prices to match what they charge in other developed countries. The U.S. government may also impose new tariffs on imported drugs. Despite those challenges, we still like the prospects for Pfizer. The company’s shares shot up to just over $67 in 2021 thanks to the huge success of its COVID-19 vaccine, developed with German drugmaker BioNTech. As the pandemic eased, the stock dropped to below $25. Pfizer used the windfall profits from its COVID-19 products to buy several smaller drugmakers. While expanding by acquisition adds risk, these new firms make a range of promising new drugs that should replace the…