Pfizer recorded the largest quarterly sales in its history as its COVID-19 franchise easily outweighed the currency issues that are challenging other companies. But expectations for a quick end to the pandemic have wiped these gains from Pfizer’s stock price.

Roche’s stock price has underperformed in the last nine months in spite of a natural hedge on the strong US dollar that has troubled most other profitable pharma companies. Has Roche become a value stock?

Among equity investors there is concern about the impact of macroeconomic headwinds on second-quarter earnings. The first two big life sciences companies’ reports did nothing to alleviate those concerns.

Antibody-drug conjugates have come a long way in two decades but pricing, defined target expression levels, toxicity and possibly the competition may defuse recent fireworks.

Even with higher interest rates, some debt on the balance sheets of profitable biotechs is healthy. However, among loss-making biotechs and in the current environment, raising new debt has unhealthy connotations.

Most of the money raised by biotech companies to address chronic hepatitis B has resulted in failed programs. But wait, a glimmer of light from yonder pharma breaks.

It takes a lot of negotiation with regulators, advisory boards, and alignment between commercial and portfolio management teams to define and agree a clinical trial protocol. Why on earth would companies change it once a study is underway?

Do rare disease drugs with tiny patient populations lie outside the profitability continuum that runs from small-molecule primary care products to specialist biologics?

Improving efficacy by combining drugs has been a mainstay of cancer therapy but adding new targeted drugs together based on very early-stage data is not working out, especially when one of the drugs is barely active on its own.

It is easy for university researchers to criticize the pharmaceutical sector’s R&D productivity when they ignore the contributions of all the drugs that have been approved, and all those that have been rejected.

Some commercial-stage biotechnology companies blame the pandemic for their declining sales and continued losses. While an acquisition by a bigger company might once have been an aspiration, further fundraisings seem to be the more likely outcome.

Another blow-out quarter from Pfizer provided the impetus for an acquisition. But the history of recent commercial-stage biotech transactions and the risky nature of all early-stage companies suggest that the floodgates will not burst open.