Vaccine spurs Pfizer gains

Article Excerpt

PFIZER INC. $48 is a buy. The prescription drug maker (New York symbol PFE; Income Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 5.6 billion; Market cap: $268.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.8; Dividend yield: 3.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.pfizer.com) hit a new all-time high of $52 in August 2021, thanks largely to the success of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed in partnership with German drugmaker BioNTech (Nasdaq symbol BNTX). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now granted the vaccine full approval. The FDA had previously authorized its use under an emergency-use declaration. The U.S. government has also authorized a third shot of the vaccine as a booster shot given the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant. As a result, Pfizer now expects sales of its COVID-19 vaccine to total $33.5 billion for all of 2021. That’s up from its previous estimate of $26 billion and represents 42% of the company’s 2021 revenue estimate of $79 billion. Pfizer is a buy…