Pfizer has a new playbook for reviving sales—and it’s starting to pay off

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Pfizer had a problem. Doctors weren’t prescribing its migraine drug Nurtec because they assumed insurance coverage would be too much of a hassle.

So last year the company created a phone line for doctors and patients to call Pfizer directly for help. Pfizer now credits that and other changes for a 31% increase in Nurtec’s U.S. sales last year.

The beleaguered drugmaker’s shares still haven’t recovered from their post-Covid slump, and shareholders are wary. But sales of products such as Nurtec and the vaccine Abrysvo that the company has been counting on are rising, and an activist shareholder’s push has lost steam. Pfizer did it by shaking up its U.S.

sales strategy, shifting where it deploys its sales representatives, how they market to doctors and how the company helps patients pay for their prescriptions. Nurtec sales have picked up. The drug delivered $1.2 billion in U.S.

revenue last year, up 31% from 2023. Chief Executive Albert Bourla says the company is on an upswing, after Pfizer beat analyst estimates recently for the fourth consecutive quarter. “Everything is clicking," Bourla said.

Pfizer made a big bet on Nurtec. The drug was the crown jewel of an $11.6 billion deal that closed in 2022. Analysts estimated the medicine would ring up $4 billion in yearly sales by 2030, revenue Pfizer was counting on as sales from older products faded.

But Nurtec sales under Pfizer got off to a disappointing start. It was Pfizer’s fault, said Peter McAllister, a neurologist and co-founder of New England Institute for Neurology and Headache, one of the country’s biggest prescribers of migraine drugs, in Stamford, Conn. “Instead of really getting out there promoting" Nurtec, he said, Pfizer