If you think Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are making a fortune on COVID-19 vaccine sales this year, just wait for 2022.
The messenger RNA shot producers are projected to break the bank next year, generating combined sales of $93.2 billion, nearly twice the amount they are expected to rake in this year, says Airfinity. The health data analytics group puts total market sales for COVID-19 vaccines in 2022 at $124 billion, according to data seen by The Financial Times.
Pfizer vaccine sales will reach $54.5 billion in 2022 and Moderna’s will hit $38.7 billion, Airfinity predicts. The estimates blow the consensus figures of $23.6 billion for Pfizer and $20 billion for Moderna out of the water.
“The numbers are unprecedented,” Rasmus Beck Hansen, CEO of Airfinity, told the Financial Times.
Sales of the mRNA shots will continue to escalate in 2022 through booster use and countries stockpiling to protect against variants, Airfinity said. Pfizer will generate 64% of its sales and Moderna 75% of its from high-income countries in 2022, the analysts believe.
While the figures may be astonishing, sales of the vaccines have already surprised even their producers. After predicting in April that it would generate $26 billion in vaccine sales this year, Pfizer boosted the figure to $33.5 billion when reporting second-quarter results. At the same time, Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal said the company could ring up an additional $10 billion in vaccine sales in 2021.
Airfinity’s estimates indicate that mRNA vaccines will continue their dominance of the non-Chinese vaccine market in 2022, accounting for three-quarters of sales. The rest of the market will be supplied by the adenovirus vaccines AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik V. Novavax’s yet-to-be-approved subunit vaccine could also be on the market in 2022.