BRIEF—Pfizer to ‘Catch Our Breath’ on deals after $43 billion purchase

Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said the pharma giant is pausing big acquisitions after spending $43 billion last year on buying Seagen, according to a Bloomberg report.

“We need to catch our breath and make sure we execute well on what we have right now,” Mr Bourla explained at the Goldman Sachs’ health care conference in Miami.

Seagen gave Pfizer a stable of cancer drugs. Pfizer expects its recent acquisitions to add $25 billion to annual revenue by 2030.

“The acquisition of Seagen was a bet on a technology, which is ADC, and on a company, which is Seagen,” he said.

Both of them, since we made the decision, have made significant strides to believe that these were the right decisions, the CEO said.

Pfizer has also acquired Arena, Biohaven and Global Blood Therapeutics, thus pouring over $70 billion to bolster its pipeline with blockbuster takeouts.

Mr Bourla also noted that Pfizer hit in an inflection point of going very, very high in terms of reputation, revenues, stock price through the COVID period; and then when COVID subsided, losing significant part of that. “So we are trying to find our next wave of impressing the investors.”