Pfizer CEO plans for soaring consumer market for obesity drugs akin to Viagra
By Michael Erman
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Pfizer is preparing for a consumer market for obesity drugs on par with the growing business it saw after introducing the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra in 1998, Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said on Monday.
Even as it negotiated the acquisition of weight-loss drug maker Metsera, which the drugmaker first announced in September 2025, Bourla said Pfizer did not expect the cash-only market for obesity drugs, currently dominated by Eli Lilly and Co and Novo Nordisk, to grow this large and this quickly.
Speaking to a group of reporters during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Bourla said, “Lilly and Novo both pitched their sales and had significant sales outside of the reimbursement system. We were basically estimating very limited sales outside the US.”
“Now we see it working almost like Viagra, where people were willing to pay and buy, but there were no refunds whatsoever.”
Pfizer developed and sold Viagra, now sold mostly as a generic drug, for years, but spun off from the business that controlled the brand in 2020.
Pfizer said it doesn’t expect to return to revenue growth until 2029 as it tries to develop blockbuster new drugs, including obesity treatments, from its $10 billion Metsera acquisition.
The company announced earlier Monday that it plans to launch 10 different phase 3 studies of obesity compounds from Metsera by the end of the year, including one it launched in November. It acquired Metsera for up to $10 billion after winning the bidding war against Novo.
“We are all in obesity,” Bourla said. “We have invested. We have good expertise in commercial, good expertise in development and good expertise in exploration.”
Pfizer said it expects the next few years to be bumpy due to expiring patents on key drugs, declining sales in its COVID-19 business and price cuts promised to the U.S. government.
It became the first major pharmaceutical company to sign a deal with the Trump administration to lower the price of prescription drugs in the Medicaid program in exchange for a three-year tariff reduction.
Bourla said government agreements that require drugmakers to offer their new drugs at the same price in the U.S. as they do abroad will help companies pressure European countries to increase what they will pay for the drugs.
Bourla said, “Are you going to reduce (US) prices to the level of France, or are you going to stop supplying to France? Are you going to stop supplying to France?” he said. “So they will be left without new drugs… because the system will force us not to accept ‘low prices’.”
(Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Jamie Freed)
