This 7% Yielder Could Be a Top AI Play

PFE +0.12%

Key Points

• A looming patent cliff in which Pfizer will lose patent exclusivity to a handful of drugs has combined with cratering revenue from COVID-19 treatments to drive Pfizer shares down 50% since 2022.

• Pfizer has two important catalysts that can help it not only survive but also thrive amid these these challenges.

• Pfizer's yield of 6.9% looks safe considering the massive cost savings it's on track to notch as it harnesses AI across every stage of the drug development process.

• 10 stocks we like better than Pfizer ›

Shares of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) have suffered over the last three years, falling some 50% since December 2022. Shares have been weighed down by the collapse in revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, and its COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid, which together brought in over 54% of Pfizer's $100.3 billion in revenue in 2022. In the third quarter of 2025, Paxlovid revenue fell by 55% year over year, while revenue from Comirnaty fell 20%.

You can see the importance of a few blockbuster treatments for Pfizer by comparing last quarter's revenue to that of Q3 2022. Three years ago, Pfizer reported Q3 revenue of $22.6 billion, compared to $16.7 billion last quarter. Clearly, the enormous tailwind that its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment presented for Pfizer is winding down.

A looming patent cliff has also weighed on its share price. In 2026, its pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar 13 patent will expire, with patents for its anticoagulant Eliquis, its breast cancer treatment Ibrance, and its prostate cancer therapy Xtandis expiring in 2027. Eliquis alone brought in $7.4 billion in revenue in 2024, and all told, the looming patent cliff is expected to affect $236 billion in revenue for pharmaceutical companies worldwide by 2030.

With its steep sell-off since 2022, Wall Street clearly expects Pfizer to endure its share of pain from the global $236 billion hit to big pharma. But there are two major reasons to think Pfizer can not just survive but even thrive during and after the looming patent cliff.

Pfizer's foray into the $133 billion weight loss drug market

Big pharma is well aware that it must build a new pipeline of promising treatments to weather the patent cliff. One of the most straightforward ways to do this is by acquiring companies that have seen promising clinical trial results for potential blockbuster drugs.

This imperative explains Pfizer's acquisition of the biotech start-up Metsera for roughly $10 billion. On Nov. 7, Pfizer scored a major victory over rival Novo Nordisk, when Metsera accepted its bid for a takeover. The deal gives Pfizer a potential entry into the lucrative weight loss drug market, which is expected to be valued at $133 billion by 2030.

Metsera has several potential big winners in its pipeline, but the most promising might be its experimental obesity drugs MET-097i (a GLP-1 injectable) and MET-233i, which are projected to reach $5 billion in total annual peak sales.

Here's why the acquisition could be a game-changer for Pfizer: The MET-097i treatment has shown far fewer unpleasant side effects than Wegovy or Ozempic in trials, with weight loss of up to 14.1% over 28 weeks and with no plateau observed. Wegovy and Ozempic cause nausea in between 20% and 44% of users, while MET-097i triggered nausea in just 13%. Throw in that MET-097i is a monthly injection, rather than weekly for Ozempic and Wegovy, and you can see its potential to be hugely preferable as a weight loss treatment.

That's significant because those two drugs brought in $26 billion for Novo Nordisk in 2024. Taking even partial market share could bring in $10 billion a year for Pfizer, eventually paying for its acquisition of Metsera many times over.

Of course, these treatments have to be approved first. But Metsera's other candidates, including an oral weight loss treatment that would allow patients to bypass injections altogether, each provide Pfizer with a potential path to glory.

And that's all before we get to...

Pfizer's head start in AI drug discovery

As far back as 2020, Pfizer was able to create a vaccine for COVID-19 in just 269 days, a feat that ordinarily would have taken eight to 10 years. It was able to do so largely thanks to prolific investments in digital infrastructure that now allow it to process over 50 billion clinical data points annually.

The company's Pfizer-Amazon Collaboration Team (PACT) initiative helps it optimize development of new treatments through cloud-based solutions, with 14 different artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning projects already combining to save Pfizer's scientists 16,000 hours of search time annually while reducing infrastructure costs by 55%. This state-of-the-art digital infrastructure can also help with regulatory approval, which is half the battle of bringing a drug to market, as Pfizer uses AI in clinical development to create documents, tables, and reports for regulatory filings.

Because it's not unusual for the regulatory review to require tens of thousands of documents, Pfizer's investments in AI and machine learning can dramatically shorten the reviewal process.

This greater efficiency may be a key driver behind Pfizer's recent productivity gains. In Q3 2025, the company reported that it is on track to deliver approximately $7.7 billion in anticipated overall savings while reinvesting another $500 million into research and development.

And while AI is already moving the needle for Pfizer in a big way, investors should note that we're still in the very early days of the era of AI-powered drug discovery. It's been barely a year since Pfizer partnered with the semiconductor giant Nvidia to build its "Ignition AI Accelerator" to leverage AI across every stage of the drug development process.

Of course, Pfizer's competitors are also sparing no expense to ramp up their AI drug discovery platforms. But Pfizer has been leveraging AI technology to accelerate drug development since 2014, and it's no accident that it was the first company to develop and get approval for a COVID-19 vaccine in its partnership with BioNTech.

And even if another company leapfrogs Pfizer in this field, investors shouldn't think of this as a zero-sum game. It's entirely possible for each of the pharma giants to thrive as new AI technologies uncover blockbuster drug candidates at a rate that's hard to conceive of today. The research firm McKinsey & Co forecasts that AI could deliver $110 billion annually for the pharmaceutical industry, so capturing even a portion of that could move the needle for Pfizer shares.

In the meantime, Pfizer offers a dividend yield of 6.9%, which is over 5 times the yield of the average S&P 500 company. And if Pfizer can realize even a fraction of its anticipated total net cost savings by 2027, this payout will likely be safe. In a time when the AI tech titans offer paltry yields or none at all, Pfizer is a buy for income-oriented investors seeking to play the AI revolution.

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William Dahl has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Nvidia, and Pfizer. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

This 7% Yielder Could Be a Top AI Play was originally published by The Motley Fool