This is the definitive Pfizer profile — 175 years of company, product, and communications history in one piece.
Founding (1849–1900)
Charles Pfizer, a chemist, and his cousin Charles Erhart, a confectioner, arrived in Brooklyn from Ludwigsburg, Germany in the late 1840s. In 1849 they borrowed $2,500 from Pfizer's father and opened Charles Pfizer & Company at 219 Bartlett Street, Williamsburg.
Their first product was santonin — a treatment for intestinal parasites, then endemic in mid-19th-century America. Pfizer flavored the compound with almond and toffee and molded it into a candy cone. It sold immediately.
The Civil War made Pfizer. Union Army demand for painkillers, disinfectants, and preservatives — iodine, morphine, chloroform, tartaric acid — turned the young chemical company into a wartime supplier. By 1868, revenue had roughly doubled from pre-war levels and Pfizer had opened a Manhattan headquarters on Maiden Lane.
By 1880 Pfizer had become the largest U.S. producer of citric acid, then in surging demand from the emerging soft-drink category — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper were all early customers. Citric acid, sourced from Italian and Sicilian lemons, would be the company's largest single business through World War I.
The Fermentation Era and Penicillin (1900–1950)
The pivot that made Pfizer a pharmaceutical company rather than a chemical supplier was deep-tank fermentation. In the 1920s, Pfizer chemists cracked the industrial-scale fermentation of citric acid from molasses, freeing the company from its dependence on Italian lemons. That process expertise turned out to be the exact skill required to produce a molecule that would reshape 20th-century medicine.
In 1941, U.S. War Production authorities convened American chemical companies with a single request: mass-produce penicillin for the Allied war effort. Pfizer accepted a contract that most competitors had refused as commercially unviable. The company rebuilt a Brooklyn ice plant into the world's first industrial-scale penicillin fermentation facility. By D-Day in June 1944, Pfizer was producing 90% of the penicillin that went ashore with Allied troops.
The postwar decades converted Pfizer from a supplier into a research company. Terramycin, an antibiotic discovered in Pfizer's own laboratories, launched in 1950 and became the company's first branded pharmaceutical product sold under the Pfizer name. It was the beginning of the modern branded-drug era for the company.
The Global Consumer Pharma Era (1950–2000)
The second half of the 20th century turned Pfizer into a global consumer pharmaceutical company. Feldene for arthritis. Zoloft, the SSRI that reshaped the depression market. Norvasc, a hypertension standard-of-care. Zithromax, the Z-Pak.
And then Viagra.
Discovered as a candidate cardiovascular treatment, sildenafil citrate turned out to have a well-documented side effect during clinical trials. FDA approved it in March 1998 for erectile dysfunction. The launch redefined pharmaceutical marketing. Direct-to-consumer television advertising — legal in the United States since 1997 — became a mainstream tactic on the back of Viagra. Bob Dole appeared in the launch campaign. The little blue pill became the most recognizable pharmaceutical brand of the 1990s.
Warner-Lambert followed in 2000 — a $90 billion acquisition that brought Lipitor, the cholesterol drug that would become the best-selling pharmaceutical product in history. Lipitor generated approximately $125 billion in cumulative revenue before patent expiration in 2011.
The M&A Decade (2000–2015)
The early 2000s were Pfizer's most acquisitive years. Pharmacia in 2003 for $60 billion, bringing Celebrex and Bextra. Wyeth in 2009 for $68 billion, bringing Prevnar-13 and the Enbrel franchise outside North America. Each deal added product lines and cut costs. Each also drew regulatory scrutiny, activist-investor pressure, and communications complexity.
In 2016 Pfizer attempted the largest pharmaceutical merger in history — a $160 billion tie-up with Ireland-based Allergan structured, in significant part, as an inversion to reduce Pfizer's U.S. tax exposure. The Obama Treasury Department introduced new anti-inversion rules mid-transaction. The deal collapsed. It remains one of the most consequential regulatory interventions in pharmaceutical M&A history.
Bourla Takes Over (2019)
Albert Bourla — a Greek-born veterinarian who joined Pfizer in 1993 and rose through the animal-health and vaccines businesses — became CEO in January 2019. Bourla inherited a company that had spent the previous decade on cost cuts, share buybacks, and integration work. His stated strategic thesis was different: return Pfizer to science-led growth by reinvesting in the pipeline and dismantling the low-growth Upjohn business.
In 2020 Pfizer spun off Upjohn — its legacy off-patent portfolio, including Lipitor and Viagra — into a merger with Mylan to form Viatris. What remained inside Pfizer was a leaner, higher-growth research company. The timing turned out to matter more than anyone at the time understood.
COVID-19 (2020–2022)
In March 2020 Pfizer partnered with BioNTech, a Mainz-based German biotech, on an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. Bourla publicly committed the company to speed at unusual scale and to declining federal Operation Warp Speed R&D funding — a decision Bourla framed as protection against political interference in the clinical timeline.
On November 9, 2020, Pfizer and BioNTech announced Phase 3 efficacy data of 95%. On December 11, 2020, the FDA issued the first Emergency Use Authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine. Comirnaty rollout began within 48 hours.
Pfizer generated approximately $37 billion in Comirnaty revenue in 2021 and an additional $18 billion in 2022 from the Paxlovid oral antiviral. Combined COVID revenue peaked at approximately $56 billion in 2022, roughly doubling total company revenue year-over-year. It was one of the largest single-product revenue expansions in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.
The communications posture during this period was distinctive. Bourla published a book (Moonshot, 2022) narrating the vaccine's development. He appeared on 60 Minutes, at Davos, and across the business press cycle. Pfizer positioned the company itself — not just the product — as the story. In a category historically allergic to founder-led communications, Bourla became the most visible pharmaceutical CEO in the world.
The Post-Pandemic Reset (2023–2024)
COVID demand fell faster than most analysts expected. Combined COVID revenue dropped from ~$56 billion in 2022 to approximately $12 billion in 2023 and continued falling in 2024. The stock reflected it. Pfizer traded from a 2021 peak above $60 down toward the mid-$20s through 2024.
In December 2023, Pfizer closed its $43 billion acquisition of Seagen — a Seattle-based antibody-drug-conjugate specialist and one of the fastest-growing oncology companies of the decade. The deal repositioned Pfizer as one of the top three oncology franchises globally. Padcev for bladder cancer, Adcetris for lymphoma, and a broad ADC pipeline came inside Pfizer's commercial infrastructure.
The post-pandemic communications work has been reset-and-rebuild. Pfizer's public messaging is now anchored on the oncology franchise, the vaccines franchise beyond COVID (RSV, Prevnar, meningococcal), and a shorter list of specialty priorities. The pandemic-era CEO visibility has moderated. The Seagen story is doing the work Comirnaty did in the previous cycle.
175 Years, One Line
Pfizer is the case study in what happens when a mid-19th-century chemical company builds fermentation expertise, uses it to industrialize penicillin, converts into a global consumer pharmaceutical operator, survives the M&A decade, and then finds itself at the center of the most consequential public-health event of the century — and then has to rebuild the brand in the trough that follows. Every arc in modern pharmaceutical communications is present in the Pfizer file.
1849, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by German immigrant cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart. The founding building at 219 Bartlett Street remained a Pfizer site until 2008.
Who is Pfizer's CEO?
Albert Bourla, a Greek-born veterinarian who joined Pfizer in 1993 and became CEO in January 2019.
What was Pfizer's peak COVID revenue?
Combined COVID revenue — Comirnaty vaccine plus Paxlovid antiviral — peaked at approximately $56 billion in 2022.
How much did Pfizer pay for Seagen?
Approximately $43 billion. The deal closed in December 2023 and repositioned Pfizer as one of the largest oncology franchises globally.
What was Pfizer's role in penicillin?
Pfizer was the largest single producer of penicillin during World War II, supplying approximately 90% of the penicillin that landed with Allied troops on D-Day in June 1944.
What is Pfizer's biggest-selling drug of all time?
Lipitor, the cholesterol drug acquired through the 2000 Warner-Lambert transaction. Lipitor generated approximately $125 billion in cumulative revenue before patent expiration in 2011 — the best-selling pharmaceutical product in history.
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