Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Monday that the company is preparing for a consumer market for obesity drugs comparable to the business it saw after launching erectile dysfunction drug Viagra in 1998. He made the remarks during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
Bourla stated that when Pfizer was negotiating its purchase of weight-loss drugmaker Metsera, initially announced in September 2025, the company did not anticipate the cash-pay market for obesity drugs would grow so rapidly. That market is currently dominated by Eli Lilly and Co and Novo Nordisk.
"Both Lilly and Novo presented their sales and had significant sales outside the reimbursement system. Basically, outside the U.S., we were calculating very limited sales," Bourla told reporters.
"Now we see that this operates almost like Viagra, where people were willing to pay and buy it, although it was not reimbursed at all."
Pfizer developed and sold Viagra for years, though it now sells mostly as a generic drug. The company spun off the business controlling the brand in 2020.
Earlier on Monday, Pfizer announced plans to launch 10 different phase 3 studies of obesity compounds from Metsera by year's end, including one initiated in November. The company bought Metsera for up to $10 billion after winning a bidding war against Novo.
"We are all in on obesity," Bourla said. "We invested. We have good expertise in commercial, good expertise in development and good expertise in discovery."
Pfizer has said it does not expect to return to revenue growth until 2029 as it works to develop new blockbuster drugs, including obesity treatments acquired through the Metsera purchase.
The company anticipates the next few years will be challenging due to patent expirations on key drugs, declining COVID-19 business sales, and price cuts promised to the U.S. government.
Pfizer was the first major pharmaceutical company to sign a deal with the Trump administration to lower prescription drug prices in the Medicaid program in exchange for three years of tariff relief.
Bourla said government deals requiring drugmakers to offer new medicines at the same price in the U.S. as overseas will help companies pressure European countries to increase what they pay for drugs.
"Do you reduce the (U.S.) prices to France's level or stop supplying France? You stop supplying France," Bourla said. "So they will stay without new medicines ... because the system will force us not to be able to accept the lower prices."