NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 19:40 ET — After-hours
- Pfizer shares were down about 0.02% at $24.99 in late after-hours trading.
- TD Cowen reiterated a Hold rating and a $30 price target, pointing to weak longer-term trends.
- Investors are looking to Pfizer’s next results update for clues on how quickly it can offset fading COVID demand and looming patent losses.
Pfizer Inc. shares were little changed in late after-hours trading on Tuesday, down about 0.02% at $24.99, after moving between $24.92 and $25.10 in the regular session. After-hours trading is the session after the 4 p.m. ET close, when volumes can be thinner and moves can be sharper.
The quiet tape does not mean investors have gone quiet on Pfizer. Traders have been treating the stock as a test case for whether Big Pharma can defend cash flows as pandemic-era sales fade and older blockbusters face cheaper rivals.
That backdrop has pushed Wall Street’s focus toward 2026 and beyond. Pfizer has been trying to prove that new products, dealmaking and cost cuts can fill the gap fast enough to keep earnings and the dividend supported.
TD Cowen analyst Steve Scala reiterated a Hold rating and kept a $30 price target, saying his model changes were mixed and the outlook through 2030 remains pressured. A price target is an analyst’s estimate of where a stock could trade over the next 12 months; Scala wrote Pfizer’s current profit outlook “is not the basis for top performance in Pharma stocks.” Investing.com
The broader market offered little help. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF was down about 0.15%, while the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund slipped roughly 0.07%; larger pharma peers Merck and Johnson & Johnson also traded lower late in the day.
Pfizer’s own guidance has kept the near-term debate front and center. The company said on Dec. 16 it expected 2026 revenue of $59.5 billion to $62.5 billion and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.80 to $3.00; “adjusted” figures strip out certain items that management says can obscure underlying performance. Pfizer
Pfizer said that outlook includes about a $1.5 billion year-over-year drop in revenue from its COVID-19 products versus 2025 expectations, plus another roughly $1.5 billion hit from products losing exclusivity. Loss of exclusivity is when patents or regulatory protections expire, allowing generics or biosimilars to compete and typically driving down prices.
The company also flagged continued investment in its pipeline and acquired assets. Pfizer projected 2026 adjusted R&D expenses of $10.5 billion to $11.5 billion and said it was prioritizing work on a PD-1 x VEGF program in-licensed from 3SBio and multiple clinical programs from obesity-focused Metsera.
At Tuesday’s price, Pfizer trades at roughly 8.6 times the midpoint of its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance — a low valuation that can look attractive, but also reflects how much execution risk investors are pricing in.
That is what traders are watching next. They will be looking for evidence that declines in COVID-19 products are stabilizing, that new launches can scale quickly, and that savings from Pfizer’s cost realignment efforts can protect margins as older drugs face competition.
The next scheduled checkpoint is early February. Pfizer said it plans to issue its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 performance report on Feb. 3, ahead of a 10 a.m. EST conference call with analysts.
For now, Pfizer’s stock remains pinned near the $25 level, with investors weighing the appeal of a defensive dividend name against the pressure of a multi-year patent and product cycle that analysts say is still working through the numbers.
