Cancer drugs should spur Pfizer

Article Excerpt

PFIZER INC. $28 is a buy. The drugmaker (New York symbol PFE; Income-Growth Dividend Payer Portfolio, Manufacturing sector; Shares outstanding: 5.6 billion; Market cap: $156.8 billion; Dividend yield: 6.0%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Highest; www.pfizer.com) raised your annual dividend rate by 2.4% with the March 2024 payment, to $0.42 a share from $0.41. The new annual rate of $1.68 yields a high 6.0%. Pfizer has raised the annual dividend rate each year for the past 14 years. To offset slowing sales of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, the company paid $43 billion for Seagen Inc. in December 2023. That company is a leader in antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) technologies; those medical treatments rely on human antibodies to better target cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. The Seagen purchase doubled the company’s cancer drugs in development to about 60. Pfizer’s overall drug pipeline could produce eight or more blockbuster medicines by 2030 compared to the current five; by definition, a blockbuster generates annual sales of $1 billion or more. Pfizer is…