Covid-19 vaccine approval and why drugmakers were racing: Pfizer and Moderna to make about $32 billion in revenue from the vaccine in 2021.

Wall Street analysts are predicting that pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna will raise $32 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales next year alone as the U.S. government decides to approve the imminent delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine.Pfizer (PFE) alone is expected to make $19 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales in 2021, according to Wall Street analyst Morgan Stanley, which does not include an estimated $975 million in 2020 vaccine revenue.In 2022 and 2023, as the world starts to get vaccinated, Pfizer is projected to take in $9.3 billion more in total Covid-19 vaccine sales, Morgan Stanley has estimated.Pfizer will split its sales with the German pharmaceutical firm BioNTech (BNTX), which it has collaborated with to create the vaccine.

Earlier this month, the Pfizer vaccine was already approved by the UK and now on Thursday, December 10, a group of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors recommended that the FDA give emergency use permission to the vaccine developed by both companiesThe estimated revenue of Pfizer in 2021 would eclipse the company’s best-selling product of last year: a pneumonia vaccine that produced revenues of $5.8 billion.Shares in BioNTech, which is approximately fresh relative to Pfizer, are booming.Its US-listed shares have risen by almost 300 percent, raising the value of the German firm to nearly 30 billion, while Moderna generated sales of just $60 million last year.According to Morgan Stanley, who said that the company’s shares had risen by over 700 percent this year alone, Moderna is now priced at $62 billion.Goldman Sachs, another Wall Street guru, claims that next year, Moderna is expected to bring in $13.2 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales.

Morgan Stanley added that the skyrocketing share price of Moderna means investors expect the firm to make $10 billion to $15 billion from sales of Covid-19 vaccines in both 2021 and 2022, followed by billions more in booster sales-a massive amount for the company that produced sales of only $60 million in 2019 and has never approved a product before.

Data has been published by both Pfizer and Moderna showing that their vaccine candidates are highly successful in preventing Covid-19.

Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine “demonstrated that the technology is safe and effective, which unlocks the potential of other vaccines in the pipeline,” Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Harrison wrote in a recent note to clients. More than one-quarter of Moderna’s market value is now assigned to its other mRNA vaccines, Morgan Stanley estimates. Meanwhile, rival drugmakers Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and AstraZeneca (AZN) have promised to make their vaccines available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.“

It is absolutely wrong for drug companies like Pfizer and Moderna to profiteer, and for their executives to make egregious personal fortunes, off of Covid-19 vaccines that have been so heavily subsidized and supported by American taxpayers,” said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog and patient advocacy group.

In a statement last month, Pfizer said its Covid-19 vaccine development and manufacturing costs “have been entirely self-funded, with billions of dollars already invested at risk.” “The company will continue bearing all the costs of development and manufacturing in an effort to help find a solution to this pandemic as fast as possible,” Pfizer said at the time. The US government has agreed to pay $1.95 billion for the first 100 million doses of vaccine.