This Could Be 1 of the Best Pharmaceutical Stock-Buying Opportunities I've Seen in Years
Key Points
The coronavirus contagion created a brilliant but relatively short-lived opportunity.
R&D work that had been put on hold earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic is being caught up on now.
Underperforming shares of Pfizer may be close to turning around as the company solidifies its efforts to restock its developmental pipeline.
- 10 stocks we like better than Pfizer ›
It's been a miserable past three years for Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) shareholders. Although this drugmaker's stock was all the rage in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it co-created a coronavirus vaccine as well as supplied a treatment, it's been unable to reproduce those incredible results.
2025's projected top line of between $61 billion and $64 billion remains markedly below 2022's record-breaking peak revenue of just over $100 billion. It would also be naïve to ignore that the pharmaceutical company was so focused on COVID-19 that other drug development efforts weren't prioritized at the time. Now it's noticeable.
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However, investors throwing in the towel on Pfizer's underperforming stock right now may be doing so at the exact wrong time. A revenue rebound is brewing.
It won't materialize this year. It probably won't start becoming evident in next year's results either. The company has regularly touted the possibility of bringing several new billion-dollar oncology drugs to the market by 2030, though, plus a weight-loss drug it picked up with November's $10 billion acquisition of Metsera that puts it into a market Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla believes could eventually be worth more than $150 billion per year.
Despite pulling the plug on a handful of trials last year including work on its phase 2 blood cancer treatment CD47, the company could still easily add on the order of $10 billion or more in new revenue by 2030.
Image source: Getty Images.
And that's just the five-year outlook. Acquisitions like Arena Pharmaceuticals in 2022 and 2023's $43 billion deal for Seagen put new prospects in the drugmaker's pipeline that can't complete their testing until after that point.
Sure, investors could wait for more clarity and certainty before wading in. The clearer this company's growth opportunity becomes, however, the higher price you'll pay. A rising price will also pare down this stock's impressive forward-looking dividend yield of 6.7%, which makes it much easier to hold it through the inevitable near-term volatility.
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James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Pfizer. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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