Is Pfizer a Buy, Sell, or Hold in 2026?

A few years ago, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) looked unstoppable. The company generated more than $100 billion in annual revenue early in the pandemic, powered by its COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment. Investors piled into the stock, expecting the pharmaceutical giant to convert its pandemic windfall into a new era of long-term growth.

That didn't happen. COVID revenue collapsed. The stock fell more than 60% from its pandemic highs. Now, let's reevaluate the question: Is Pfizer a buy, sell, or hold?

Patent-cliff blues

Pfizer stock currently trades at less than 9 times forward earnings while yielding more than 6%, making it one of the cheapest large-cap pharmaceutical stocks on the market. That immediately gets income investors interested. But low valuations alone don't make a stock a buy.

The real issue is whether Pfizer can successfully navigate what Wall Street calls "patent cliffs." A patent cliff occurs when a drug company loses exclusivity on a blockbuster treatment, allowing generic competitors to flood the market with cheaper versions and rapidly erode revenue. This is what Pfizer is facing now, as several of its blockbuster drugs -- including Eliquis, Ibrance, Xtandi, and Xeljanz -- are expected to lose exclusivity between 2026 and 2030.

The company itself expects patent expirations alone to reduce 2026 revenue by roughly $1.5 billion. That's not trivial.

At the same time, sales of COVID products continue to decline sharply. They generated roughly $56.7 billion for Pfizer in 2022. By 2025, that figure had fallen to about $6.7 billion, and management expects around $5 billion in COVID revenue for 2026.

And yet, despite all of this, Pfizer is still expecting to bring in between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion in revenue during 2026.

Risks and rewards

Although plummeting revenue from COVID product sales and patent cliffs have pressured the stock, the company has been aggressively rebuilding through acquisitions, oncology expansion, and pipeline development. Perhaps the most important move was Pfizer's acquisition of Seagen, which dramatically expanded its cancer-drug business.

Seagen is a leader in antibody-drug conjugates, an emerging class of targeted cancer therapies that many analysts believe could become one of the pharmaceutical industry's biggest long-term growth markets. For Pfizer, the deal was less about short-term revenue and more about rebuilding itself around oncology for the next decade.

Image source: Getty Images.

Oncology now represents roughly 27% of Pfizer's total revenue, with products like Padcev, Xtandi, Lorbrena, and oncology biosimilars helping offset declining COVID sales. Meanwhile, Pfizer says its recently launched and acquired products generated $10.2 billion in revenue in 2025, increasing about 14% year over year on an operational basis.

If Pfizer can successfully replace declining legacy drug sales with oncology, anti-obesity, and other next-generation therapies, its current valuation could look extremely cheap. But there are risks. The company's 2026 forecast for earnings per share of $2.80 to $3 disappointed analysts, especially given the mounting headwinds from patent expirations, declining COVID demand, and higher taxes.

The question is whether Pfizer's legacy products are losing pricing power faster than newer drugs are scaling up. This is something to watch closely.

Can the company's oncology pipeline and recent acquisitions generate enough growth to offset those losses during the next several years? Right now, there's just not enough data to know the answer.

The verdict

When it comes to pharmaceutical stocks, Pfizer probably isn't a screaming buy in 2026. But I also don't think it looks like a sell. To me, it increasingly looks like a classic "hold" stock: a mature pharmaceutical company going through a major transition period while paying investors generously to wait.

If management successfully executes its oncology strategy, today's valuation could eventually look very attractive. But if revenue erosion outpaces pipeline growth, Pfizer could remain stuck in neutral for years.

That's why in 2026, Pfizer seems like a long-term income-and-value play with moderate upside.

Jeff Siegel 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.