What should I know about Pfizer?
Pfizer is a US pharmaceutical company, headquartered in New York, that discovers, makes and sells medicines and vaccines. Cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart founded it in Brooklyn in 1849, and it has been publicly traded since 1942. Its research focuses on four areas: internal medicine, inflammation and immunology, vaccines, and oncology (cancer). Pfizer developed the Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine with BioNTech and has grown through acquisitions, including Seagen (cancer medicines, 2023) and Metsera (obesity, 2025). In its second-quarter 2026 results, Pfizer reported revenue of $15.0 billion.
What are Pfizer's main drugs?
Pfizer's biggest products include the blood thinner Eliquis (developed with Bristol Myers Squibb), the Prevnar pneumococcal vaccines, and Vyndamax (tafamidis), which treats the heart condition transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM). In 2024, Eliquis earned about $7.4 billion and Prevnar about $6.4 billion for Pfizer, and the tafamidis franchise reached $6.3 billion in 2025. Other major medicines include the breast cancer drug Ibrance and the bladder cancer drug Padcev. Several key products face patent expiries between 2026 and 2030.
What is Pfizer currently developing?
Obesity is Pfizer's most visible new bet. After acquiring Metsera, it is moving a weekly and monthly injectable GLP-1 candidate into Phase 3, with a monthly amylin-based candidate and an oral GLP-1 in earlier trials. Pfizer says launches could begin as early as 2028, although this depends on trial success. In oncology, it is extending Padcev into earlier bladder cancer, and the FDA approved Padcev with Keytruda in November 2025 for muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients who cannot take cisplatin chemotherapy.
Have there been any controversies involving Pfizer?
Yes. In 2009 Pfizer agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing of its painkiller Bextra and pay a then-record $2.3 billion to settle allegations that it improperly promoted 13 medicines. Pfizer has also come under scrutiny for misleadingly claiming that Vyndamax is the “one standard of care” to treat ATTR-CM, hiding the existence of other treatments for like BridgeBio’s Atruby. A German court also ordered Pfizer to stop describing Vyndamax as providing “near-complete stabilization” of transthyretin, finding that the claim was not supported by evidence or the product’s label. More recently, over a thousand lawsuits have alleged that its contraceptive injection Depo-Provera raises the risk of the brain tumour meningioma.
Is Pfizer publicly traded, and how big is it?
Yes. Pfizer is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PFE. Its market value was about $142 billion in mid-July 2026. The company reported revenue of $15.0 billion in the second quarter of 2026 and now expects full-year 2026 revenue of $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion. Revenue from COVID-19 products has fallen sharply from its pandemic peak, and Pfizer has been using acquisitions to build new growth areas.